Dungan language

Dungan ( or ) is a Sinitic language (or in the area from which the particular Hui community had been resettled). At the same time, due to their unique history, their speech would be rich in Islamic or Islam-influenced terminology, based on loanwords from Arabic, Persian and Turkic languages, as well as translations of them into Chinese.

As the Dungans in the Russian Empire — and even more so in the Soviet Union — were isolated from China, their language experienced significant influence from the Russian and the Turkic languages of their neighbors.

After the foundation of the Soviet Union, researchers established a literary (standard) form of Dungan.

Dungan's first alphabet was Latinized. Publications began in 1929, ceased shortly before WWII, and continued in 1955 after the development of a new Cyrillized alphabet.

Geographical distribution

Dungan is spoken primarily in Kyrgyzstan, with speakers in Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan as well.

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 ethnic groups in Central Asia; however, in the post-Soviet period, the proportion of Dungans speaking the Dungan language as their native language appears to have fallen sharply.

{| style="margin: auto" class="wikitable sortable"

|+Dungan speakers by population

! Year !! Dungan L1 !! Russian L2 !! Total Dungan population !! Source

! 1970

| 36,445 (94.3%) || 18,566 (48.0%) || 38,644 || Soviet census

! 1979

| 49,020 (94.8%) || 32,429 (62.7%) || 51,694 || Soviet census

! 1989

| 65,698 (94.8%) || 49,075 (70.8%) || 69,323 || Soviet census

! 2001

| 41,400 (41.4%) || N/A || 100,000 || Ethnologue

Dialects

Dungan is composed of two dialects. The Gansu dialect, or "Bishkek group", is concentrated in Kyrgyzstan. The Shaanxi dialect, or "Tokmak group", is concentrated in Kazakhstan. There are minor differences in vocabulary and phonology. For example, the Gansu first-person pronoun is , while the Shaanxi first-person pronoun is .

Standard Dungan is based largely on the Gansu dialect.

!Aspirated consonant|

|()

Vowels

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"

! rowspan="2" |Medial

! colspan="12" |Nucleus

!ɤ

!ɛ

!ɔ

!ʊ

!əj

!̃

!æ̃

!ɔ̃

!ʊ̃

!ɚ

|ɨ

|ɤ

|ɛ

|ɔ

|ʊ

|əj

|ə̃

|æ̃

|ɔ̃

|ʊ̃

|ɚ

|ja

|je

|jɔ

|jɤw

|ĩ

|jɛ̃

|jɔ̃

|wa

|wɤ

|wɛ

|wɔ

|wəj

|wæ̃

|wɔ̃

|ũ

!ɥ

|ɥa

|ɥe

|ỹ

|yɛ̃

{| class="wikitable" style="font-size:1em;text-align:center;"

|+ Finals

!Cyrillic

!IPA

| rowspan="12" |

!Cyrillic

!IPA

| rowspan="12" |

!Cyrillic

!IPA

| rowspan="12" |

!Cyrillic

!IPA

!ы

!и

!ў

!ү

!а

!я

!уа

!үa

!ә

!е

!уә

!үә

!э

!уэ

!о

!ё

!уэй

| rowspan="2" |

!ый

!уй

!у

!ю

!уо

!ан

!ян

!уан

!үан

!он

!ён

!уон

!ын

!ин

!ун

!үн

!эр

!ўн

can be heard as in Kyrgyzstan.
With , is respelled as to avoid homography with the Russian-language vulgarity. This is the same treatment as in the Palladius system.

In addition to the above table, there are rhotacised vowels, as well as some finals only seen in loanwords from Russian, Arabic, Kyrgyz, etc.

Finals beginning with (including ) or are also valid syllables. Dungan is characterized by a paucity of zero-initial syllables otherwise, with zero initial being limited to the rhotacized , the prefix , and to interjections.

Tones

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"

|+ Tonal comparison between Dungan and Mandarin

!rowspan="2" colspan="2"|Tone name

!colspan="2"|Dungan example

!colspan="2"|Gansu-Dungan

!colspan="2"|Shaanxi-Dungan

!rowspan="2"|Notes

!rowspan="2"|Standard Chinese tone number

!colspan="2"|Chinese character

!colspan="2"|Standard Chinese

!Orthography

!IPA

!Pitch pattern

!Tone contour

!Pitch pattern

!Tone contour

!Orthography

!IPA

!Pitch pattern

!Tone contour

|rowspan="2"| píngshēng

| yīnpíng

|

|rowspan="2"|Rising

|rowspan="2"| (24)

|Falling

| (51)

|rowspan="2" style="text-align: left;"|Ia merges to Ib in word-final syllables, including monosyllables.

|High

| (55)

| yángpíng

|

|Rising

| (24)

|Rising

| (35)

|colspan="2"| shǎngshēng

|Falling

| (51)

|Falling

| (53)

|Low/dipping

| (1, 214)

|colspan="2"| qùshēng

|High

| (44)

|High

| (44)

|style="text-align: left;"|Some syllables originating in tone 4 fall into tone 1 in modern Mandarin.

|Falling

| (52)

|colspan="2"| qīngshēng

|

|Short

|Varies

|Short

|Varies

|style="text-align: left;"|Actual pitch depends on the preceding syllable.

|Short

|Varies

Writing system

thumb|right|Bilingual sign in Dungan and Russian respectively, at the home of Soviet war hero . The sentence includes the Russian loanwords "Soviet" and "museum".

The modern Dungan language is the only Chinese language that is written in the Cyrillic alphabet, as they lived under Soviet rule. It is a Russian-based alphabet plus five additional letters: Ә, Җ, Ң, Ў and Ү. As such, it differs from the Palladius System that is normally used in Russia to render Chinese in Cyrillic.

{| class="wikitable" style="margin: 1em auto 1em auto;text-align:center;"

|+Modern Dungan alphabet and letter pronunciations

! Cyrillic !! А/а !! Б/б !! В/в !! Г/г !! Д/д !! Е/е !! Ё/ё !! Ә/ә !! Ж/ж !! Җ/җ !! З/з !! И/и !! Й/й !! К/к

! Name

| a || бэ || вэ || гэ || дэ || e || ё || ә || жэ ||| җe ||| зэ ||| и || йи || кa

! IPA

| || || || || || || || || || || || || ||

| colspan=15 |

! Cyrillic !! Л/л !! М/м !! Н/н !! Ң/ң !! О/о !! П/п !! Р/р !! С/с !! Т/т !! У/у !! Ў/ў !! Ү/ү !! Ф/ф !! Х/х

! Name

| эль || эм || эн || ың || o || пэ || эр || эc ||| тэ ||| у ||| ў || ү || эф || xa

! IPA

| || || || || || || || || || || || || ||

| colspan=11 |

! Cyrillic !! Ц/ц !! Ч/ч !! Ш/ш !! Щ/щ !! Ъ/ъ !! Ы/ы !! Ь/ь !! Э/э !! Ю/ю !! Я/я

! Name

| цэ || чэ || шa || щa || нин xo || ы || ван xo || э ||| ю ||| йa

! IPA

| || || || || || || || || ||

Dungan is unique in that it is one of the few varieties of Chinese that is not normally written using Chinese characters. Though it may be seen written in Chinese characters, this writing system is now considered obsolete. Originally, the Dungan, as descendants of the Hui, wrote their language in an Arabic-based alphabet known as Xiao'erjing. The Soviet Union banned all Arabic scripts in 1925, which led to a Latin orthography based on Yañalif. The Latin orthography lasted until 1952, 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. Tone marks or numbering do not appear in general-purpose writing, but are specified in dictionaries, even for loanwords. The tones are specified using Roman numerals.

Comparison with Palladius system

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;"

! Pinyin

! Palladius

! Dungan

| rowspan=7 |

! Pinyin

! Palladius

! Dungan

| rowspan=7 |

! Pinyin

! Palladius

! Dungan

| rowspan=7 |

! Pinyin

! Palladius

! Dungan

! b

| colspan=2 | б

! p

| colspan=2 | п

! m

| colspan=2 | м

! f

| colspan=2 | ф

! d

| colspan=2 | д

! t

| colspan=2 | т

! n

| н

| н / л

! l

| colspan=2 | л

! z

| цз

| з

! c

| colspan=2 | ц

! s

| colspan=2 | с

| colspan=3 |

! j

| цз / цзь

| җ / җь

! q

| ц / ць

| ч / чь

! x

| с / сь

| щ / щь

| colspan=3 |

! zh

| чж

| җ

! ch

| colspan=2 | ч

! sh

| ш

| ш / с / ф

! r

| colspan=2 | ж

! g

| colspan=2 | г

! k

| colspan=2 | к

| colspan=3 |

! h

| colspan=2 | х

Grammar

Classifiers

Chinese varieties usually have different classifiers for different types of nouns, with northern varieties tending to have fewer classifiers than southern ones. (formerly spelled as ) is the only classifier found in the Dungan language, though not the only measure word.

Vocabulary

There is a varying degree of mutual intelligibility between Dungan and various Mandarin dialects.

The basilects of Gansu/Shaanxi Mandarin and Dungan are largely mutually intelligible; Chinese journalists conversant in one of those Mandarin dialects report that they can make themselves understood when communicating with Dungan speakers.

On the other hand, Dungan speakers like Iasyr Shivaza and others have reported that people who speak the Beijing Mandarin dialect can understand Dungan, but Dungans could not understand Beijing Mandarin.

At the level of basic vocabulary, Dungan contains many words not present in most Mandarin dialects, such as Russian, Arabic, Turkic, and Persian loanwords. When Dru C. Gladney, who had spent some years working with the Hui people in China, met with Dungans in Almaty in 1988, he described the experience as speaking "in a hybrid Gansu dialect that combined Turkish and Russian lexical items". Rimsky-Korsakoff Dyer suggests that the Arabic, Turkic and Persian influences are limited mostly to common personal names (such as Fatima and Mukhamed) and to days of the week. About 9% of Dungan words are Russian in origin.) and call government offices yamen ( ), a term for mandarins' offices in ancient China.

Furthermore, the acrolects of Dungan and Gansu/Shaanxi Mandarin have diverged significantly due to time and cultural influences. During the 20th century, translators and intellectuals introduced many neologisms and calques into the Chinese language, especially for political and technical concepts. Meanwhile, the Dungan, cut off from the mainstream of Chinese discourse by orthographic and political barriers, instead borrowed words for those same concepts from Russian, with which they came into contact through government and higher education.

These borrowings, as well as native Sinitic Dungan vocabulary, affect mutual intelligibility between Dungan and Standard Mandarin.

1950s-era immigrants from Ili and 21st-century increased contact have resulted in mainstream Chinese vocabulary entering the lexicon; for example, radio broadcasts used to sign off with but have switched to .

References

Citations

Sources

; General references

: Contains a detailed bibliography and ample samples of Shivaza works', some in the original Cyrillic Dungan, although most in a specialized transcription, with English and sometimes standard Chinese translations.
: Contains an experimental analysis of Dungan tones.
: = A Study of the Dungan Language of Central Asia. Description of the Dungan language by a professor of Xinjiang University.
: Long essay on Dungan, with sample texts.

External links

(see [https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=51189])

Geographical distribution

Dialects

Vowels

Tones

Writing system

Comparison with Palladius system

Grammar

Classifiers

Vocabulary

See also

References

Citations

Sources

External links