Dungan language

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The Dungan language (Dungan: Хуэйзў йүян Huejzw jyian, Russian: дунганский язык tr.:dunganskij jazyk, Simplified Chinese: 东干语; Traditional Chinese: 東干語; pinyin: Dōnggān yǔ) is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken by the Dungan (or Hui) of Central Asia.

[edit] Demographics

Dungan is spoken primarily in Kyrgyzstan, with speakers in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Russia as well. The Dungan ethnic group are the descendants of refugees from China who migrated west into Central Asia. It is used in the school system. In the Soviet time there were several school textbooks published for studying Dungan language, a three volume Russian-Dungan dictionary (14,000 words), the Dungan-Russian dictionary, philology monographs on the language and books in Dungan. The first Dungan-language newspaper was established in 1932; it continues publication today in weekly form.

According to the Soviet census statistics from 1970 to 1989, the Dungan maintained the use of their ethnic language much more successfully than other minority nationalities in Central Asia; however, in the post-Soviet period, the proportion of Dungans speaking the Dungan language as their mother tongue appears to have fallen sharply.

[edit] Phonology and vocabulary

In basic structure and vocabulary, the Dungan language is not very different from Mandarin Chinese, specifically the dialects of Mandarin spoken in the provinces of Shaanxi and Gansu. Like other Chinese languages, Dungan is tonal. There are two main dialects, one with 4 tones, and the other, considered standard, with only 3 tones.

The basilects of Gansu/Shaanxi Mandarin and Dungan are largely intercomprehensible; Chinese journalists conversant in one of those Mandarin dialects report that they can make themselves understood when communicating with Dungan speakers. However, even at the level of basic vocabulary, Dungan contains many words not present in modern Mandarin dialects, such as Arabic and Persian loanwords, as well as archaic Qing dynasty-era Chinese vocabulary.[1]. Furthermore, the acrolects of Dungan and Gansu/Shaanxi Mandarin have diverged significantly due to time and environmental influence. During the 20th century, translators and intellectuals introduced many neologisms and calques into the Chinese language, especially for political and technical concepts. However, the Dungan, cut off from the mainstream of Chinese discourse by orthographic barriers, instead borrowed words for those same concepts from Russian, with which they came into contact through government and higher education. As result of these borrowings, the equivalent standard Chinese terms are not widely known or understood among the Dungan.[2]

[edit] Writing system

Dungan is unique in that it is the only variety of the Chinese language which is not normally written using Chinese characters. Originally the Dungan, who were Muslim descendants of the Hui, wrote their language in an Arabic-based system known as Xiao'erjing. The Soviet Union banned all Arabic scripts in the late 1920s, which led to a Latin orthography. The Latin orthography lasted until 1940, when the Soviet government promulgated the current Cyrillic-based system. Xiao'erjing is now virtually extinct in Dungan society, but it remains in limited use by some Hui communities in China.

The writing system is based on the standard 3-tone dialect. Tones marks or numbering do not appear in general-purpose writing, but are specified in dictionaries, even for loanwords.

[edit] See also

• Diasystem

[edit] External links

• Ethnologue entry
• "Implications of the Soviet Dungan Script for Chinese Language Reform": long essay on Dungan, with sample texts
• Omniglot entry
• The Shaanxi Village in Kazakhstan
• Soviet census data for mother tongue and second language, in English

[edit] Books

• Svetlana Rimsky-Korsakoff Dyer, "Soviet Dungan: The Chinese language of central Asia: alphabet, phonology, morphology." Asian Studies Research Institute, Indiana University, 1967. (No ISBN).
• Svetlana Rimsky-Korsakoff Dyer, "Iasyr Shivaza: The Life and Works of a Soviet Dungan Poet". 1991. ISBN 3631439636. (Contains amples samples of Shivaza works', some in the original Cyrillic Dungan, although most in a specialized transcription, with English and sometimes standard Chinese translations).