The present work is a brief grammar of Classical Mongolian, or, in other words, Written Mongolian that has been the literary language of all the Mongols (Khalkhas, Oirats, Buriats, Kalmüks, etc). It has never been spoken in this form and served as the language of books. Today a little modified version of this written language is used in Inner Mongolia, in the Xinjiang Autonom territory. They write and publish books in the Uighur script, however the pronunciation is far from the written form. Nowadays, the Uighur script is going to be reintroduced in the Mongolian Republic, it is taught in the elementary school side by side with the Cyrillic scrip. The monuments of Written Mongolian cover large-scale literary forms: inscriptions, Buddhist sûtras, historical chronicles, folklore texts, and poetical and prosaic works of poets and writers of the centuries. This short grammar may help anybody interested in Mongolian culture to get closer to these literary monuments. The author is a mongolist making research in the Research Group of Altaic Studies of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. She teaches classical Mongolian language, culture and religion at the Department of Inner Asian Studies of the Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem of Budapest. Hopefully this short summary of Classical Mongolian will help the students of the Inner Asian department to learn the Mongolian language more effectively and will also serve as a contribution to the linguastic work carried out at this department. The work was carried out in the framework of the project of description of grammars of the Altaic languages fulfilled by the members of the above mentioned institutions. Table of ContentsPrefaceAbbreviations0. Introduction0.1. Origin of Classical Mongolian0.4. Usage of Classical Mongolian0.5. Sources0.6. Previous studies1. Phonology1.1. Vowels1.2. Consonants1.3. Diphthongs1.4. Phological rules1.4.1. Vowel harmony1.4.2. Consonants1.4.3. Labial attraction2. Morphology2.1. Nominal morphology2.1.1. Noun2.1.1.1. Number2.1.1.2. Gender2.1.1.3. Noun cases2.1.1.4. Subject possessive marker2.1.1.5. Possession2.1.2. Adjectives2.1.3. Pronoun2.1.3.1. Personal pronouns2.1.3.2. Possessive pronouns2.1.3.3. Demonstratives2.1.3.4. Reflexives2.1.3.5. Interrogative pronouns2.1.3.6. Indefinite pronouns2.1.3.7. uantitive pronouns2.1.4. Numerals2.1.4.1. Cardinal numerals2.1.4.2. Ordinal numerals2.1.4.3. Collective numerals2.1.4.4. Frequentative numerals2.1.4.5. Distributive numerals2.1.5. Adverbs2.1.5.1. Spatial adverbs2.1.5.2. Temporal adverbs2.1.5.3. Degree adverbs2.1.6. Postpositions2.1.7. Nominal negative particles2.2. Verbal morphology2.2.1. Verb2.2.1.1. Tense-aspect-mood system2.2.1.2. Imperatives2.2.1.3. Finite tense-aspect forms2.2.2. Verbal modifiers2.2.2.1. Verbal nouns2.2.2.2. Verbal adverbs2.2.3. Negation2.2.4. Verbal categorizers2.2.4.1. Passive2.2.4.2. Causative2.2.4.3. Co-operative and reflexive3. Syntax4. Sample texts4.1. 4.2.Bibliography