Activity 1. Look at the pictures, listen and read the sentences from the song. Listen to the audio as many times as you want and try to match the sounds to the words.
Үжэлээн бис. = There are three of us.
Дөртелээн бис. = There are four of us.
Бежелээн бис. = There are five of us.
Let's translate the words in the sentences literally:
As you can see, there are no verbs like "am," "is," or "are" connecting words in a sentence.
You can read more about the word order in Tuvan on this page.
Activity 2. Listen and read the numbers from 1 to 10.
1 - бир, бирээ 2 - ийи 3 - үш 4 - дөрт 5 - беш
6 - алды 7 - чеди 8 - сес 9 - тос 10 - он
Activity 3. Look at the pictures, listen and read the sentences from the song.
Үжен кижи шинчилиг бис. = It looks like there are thirty of us.
Дөртен кижи шинчилиг бис. = It looks like there are forty of us.
Бежен кижи шинчилиг бис. = It looks like there are fifty of us.
Алдан кижи шинчилиг бис. = It looks like there are sixty of us.
Let's translate the words in the sentences literally, without thinking about the grammar of the English language:
Activity 4. Listen and read the numbers from 20 to 100. Notice how some numbers are created from smaller numbers.
20 - чээрби
30 - үжен = үш (3) + он (10)
40 - дөртен = дөрт (4) + он (10)
50 - бежен = беш (5) + он (10)
60 - алдан = алды (6) + он (10)
70 - чеден = чеди (7) + он (10)
80 - сезен = сес (8) + он (10)
90 - тозан = тос (9) + он (10)
100 - чүс
Activity 4. If you want to say "11," "48" or "86" in Tuvan, you combine the numerals. Notice that there are no special numbers for the "teens," like "eleven," "fifteen," or "nineteen."
11 - он бир 15 - он беш 19 - он тос
48 - дөртен сес 86 - сезен алды 132 - чүс үжен ийи
If you want to read more about how nouns and numerals combine in Tuvan, go this page.
Learning strategy
When you are starting to learn a new language, it is useful to learn whole sentences and expressions rather than single words. This strategy is called chunking. As novice learners, you do not know yet how to create in a new language, that is, how to combine words into grammatically accurate sentences. Therefore, chunking helps you sound fluent and accurate, without knowing the grammar behind the sentences yet.
Please proceed to Part 3 Exercises to practice further recognizing and using the numerals in Tuvan.