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. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words see here. ... The Fergana Valley or Ferghana Valley (Uzbek: , Kyrgyz: Фергана өрөөнү, Tajik: водии Фaрғонa, Russian: , Persian: ‎) is a region in the Tian Shan mountain ranges of Central Asia spreading across eastern Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. ... The Chu (or Chui or Chuy) (Russian: Чу, Kyrgyz: Чүй, Kazakh: Шу) is one of the longest rivers in Kyrgyzstan and drains the northern Kyrgyz ranges of the western Tian Shan, flowing through the Chuy valley near the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek before leaving Kyrgyzstan and flowing into Kazakhstan. ... Current distribution of Human Language Families Most languages are known to belong to language families. ... Sino-Tibetan languages in red. ... This article is on all of the Northern Chinese dialects. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2:1998 Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 2: Alpha-3 code Twenty-two of the languages have two three-letter codes: a code for bibliographic use (ISO 639-2/B) a code for terminological use (ISO 639-2/T). ... ISO 639-3 is in process of development as an international standard for language codes. ... For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words see here. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone meaning sound, voice) is the study of sounds and the human voice. ... Unicode is an industry standard designed to allow text and symbols from all of the writing systems of the world to be consistently represented and manipulated by computers. ... This chart shows concisely the most common way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is applied to represent the English language. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... There exist many possible systems for transliterating the Cyrillic alphabet of the Russian language to English or the Latin alphabet. ... Simplified Chinese characters (Simplified Chinese: 简体字; Traditional Chinese: 簡體字; pinyin: jiǎntǐzì; also called 简化字/簡化字, jiǎnhuàzì) are one of two standard character sets of printed contemporary Chinese written language. ... Traditional Chinese characters are one of two standard character sets of printed contemporary Chinese written language. ... It has been suggested that Pinyin method be merged into this article or section. ... Sino-Tibetan languages in red. ... Dungan (Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ; Russian: ) is a term used in territories of the former Soviet Union to refer to a Muslim people of Chinese origin. ... The Hui people (Chinese: ; pinyin: ) are a Chinese ethnic group, typically distinguished by their practice of the Islamic religion. ... Map of Central Asia showing three sets of possible boundaries for the region Central Asia located as a region of the world Central Asia is a vast landlocked region of Asia. ...

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. Motto: Пролетарии всех стран, соединяйтесь! (Transliterated: Proletarii vsekh stran, soedinyaytes!) Translation: Workers of the world, unite!) Anthem: The Internationale (1922-1944) Hymn of the Soviet Union (1944-1991) Capital Moscow Language(s) Russian Government Socialist republic Leaders  - 1922-1924 Vladimir Lenin  - 1924-1953 Joseph Stalin  - 1953-1964 Nikita Khrushchev  - 1964-1981 Leonid Brezhnev  - 1985... Philology is the study of ancient texts and languages. ...

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.

First language (native language, mother tongue, or vernacular) is the language a person learns first. ... A second language is any language other than the first, or native, language learned; it is typically used because of geographical or social reasons. ...

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. Mandarin (Traditional Chinese: ; Simplified Chinese: ; pinyin: ; literally speech of officials), or Beifanghua (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ; literally Northern Dialect(s)), is a category of related Chinese dialects spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. ... Mandarin, when used in the broad sense to refer to most of the Chinese dialects spoken over northern and southwestern China, covers many variations. ...   (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ShÇŽnxÄ«; Wade-Giles: Shan-hsi; Postal map spelling: Shensi) is a north-central province of the Peoples Republic of China, and includes portions of the Loess Plateau on the middle reaches of the Yellow River as well as the Qinling Mountains across the... Gansu (Simplified Chinese: 甘肃; Traditional Chinese: 甘肅; Hanyu Pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Kan-su, Kansu, or Kan-suh) is a province located in the northwest of the Peoples Republic of China. ...

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] In linguistics, a basilect is a dialect of speech that has diverged so far from the standard language that in essence it has become a different language. ... Arabic ( or just ), is the largest member of the family of Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family (classification: South Central Semitic) and is closely related to Hebrew, Amharic, and Aramaic. ... Persian (local name: Fārsī or Pārsī ) is an Indo-European language spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and by minorities in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, India, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Southern Russia, neighboring countries, and elsewhere. ... A loanword (or a borrowing) is a word taken in by one language from another. ... The Qing Dynasty (Chinese: ; pinyin: Qīng cháo; Wade-Giles: Ching chao; Manchu: daicing gurun), occasionally known as the Manchu Dynasty, was a dynasty founded by the Manchu clan Aisin Gioro, in what is today northeast China, expanded into China and the surrounding territories, establishing the Empire... An acrolect is a register of a spoken language that is considered formal and high-style. ... A neologism (from Greek νεολογισμός νέος [neos] = new; λόγος [logos] = word) is a word, term, or phrase which has been recently created (coined) — often to apply to new concepts, to synthesize pre-existing concepts, or to make older terminology sound more contemporary. ... // In linguistics, a calque (pronounced ) or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, word-for-word (Latin: verbum pro verbo) or root-for-root translation. ...

Writing system

Books in Dungan, or about Dungan (in Russian or English). Most of them were published in Frunze, Kirghiz SSR in the 1970s and 80s.

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. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (2048x1536, 1108 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Dungan language Metadata This file contains additional information, probably added from the digital camera or scanner used to... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (2048x1536, 1108 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Dungan language Metadata This file contains additional information, probably added from the digital camera or scanner used to... Bishkek cityscape Bishkek (Бишкек) is the capital of Kyrgyzstan. ... State motto: Бардык өлкөлордүн пролетарлары, бириккиле! Official language None. ... А (А, а) is the first letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. ... Be (Б, б) is the second letter in the Cyrillic alphabet. ... Ve (Ð’, в) is the third letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the sound [v]. In Russian, it is pronounced [f] at the end of a word. ... Ge or He (Г, г) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, pronounced differently in different languages. ... De (Д, д) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. ... Ye, or E (Е, е), is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. ... Yo (Ё, Ñ‘) is the seventh letter of the Russian Cyrillic alphabet, invented to replace the recklessly confused е and o for soft o relatively soon after the introduction of the Civil alphabet. ... Zhe (Ж, ж) is the letter of Cyrillic alphabet which represents the voiced postalveolar fricative (sound file), the same sound which is represented by s in the English word treasure. Zhe is the 7th letter of the Bulgarian and Belarusian alphabets, the 8th letter in the Macedonian, Russian and Serbian alphabets, and... The Cyrillic letter Zhje Ò– (lowercase: Ò—, Unicode name: CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER ZHE WITH DESCENDER and CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER ZHE WITH DESCENDER) is used as a letter in the Tatar, Kalmyk and Dungan alphabets. ... Ze (З, з) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the consonant /z/. Its easily confusable with the number 3, for example the stages of the N1 rocket. ... I or Y (И, и) is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet, pronounced in Russian, or in Ukrainian. ... Й, й (Short I) is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet. ... Ka (К, к) is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the consonant /k/. It corresponds to the Roman K in origin, pronunciation, and appearance. ... El (Л, л) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. ... Em (Ðœ, м) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the consonant /m/. Code positions Categories: Cyrillic letters | Language stubs ... En (Н, н) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the consonant /n/. It looks exactly like the Latin capital letter H. Categories: Cyrillic letters | Language stubs ... The Cyrillic letter N descender or Ng (in Kazakh) (Ò¢, Ò£) is an Н with a descender. ... Cyrillic schwa (Ó˜, Ó™) is a Cyrillic letter. ... O (О, о) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the vowel /o/. Categories: Cyrillic letters | Language stubs ... Pe (П, п) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the consonant /p/. It arose directly from the Greek letter Pi (Π, Ï€). The shape of capital printed Pe can be described as a square with the bottom line missing, not to be confused with El (Cyrillic), which has a curved left. ... Er (Р, Ñ€) is the eighteenth letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. ... Es (С, с) is the nineteenth letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. ... Te (Т, Ñ‚) is the letter representing the consonant /t/ in the Cyrillic alphabet. ... U (У, у) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the vowel /u/. Categories: Cyrillic letters | Language stubs ... Short U (ÐŽ, Ñž) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the short semi-vowel in the Belarusian language, pronounced similarly to W in English. ... The Cyrillic letter Straight U or Hamza + Waw with Damma (Ò®, Ò¯) (in Kazakh) is a straight form of the Cyrillic letter У. It is used to represent the close front rounded vowel /y/. Though the letter resembles the Latin letter Y in its uppercase form, the two should not be confused. ... Ef (Ф, Ñ„) is the twenty-first letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. ... Kha, or Ha, (Ð¥, Ñ…) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the voiceless velar fricative /x/ (pronounced like the ch in German Bach). It is derived from the Greek letter chi (Χ, χ). Categories: Cyrillic letters | Language stubs ... Tse (Ц, ц) is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet. ... Che (Ч, ч) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the consonant cluster /tS/ or /tS/ (like the ch in change). Categories: Cyrillic letters | Language stubs ... Sha (Ш, ш) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the consonant sound /ʃ/ or /ʃʲ/. It is equivalent to sh in English, ch in French, sch in German, ÅŸ in Turkish, or sz in Polish. ... Shcha or Shta (Щ, щ) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the consonant // or // in Russian, // or // in Ukrainian, and the consonant // in Bulgarian. ... The letter (Ъ, ÑŠ) of the Cyrillic alphabet is known as the hard sign (твёрдый знак ) in the modern Russian alphabet and as er golyam (ер голям, big yer) in the Bulgarian alphabet. ... Yery (Ы, Ñ‹) is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet. ... Soft Sign (Ь, ÑŒ) is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet (Russian: мягкий знак (mÄ­ahkiy znak) [], Ukrainian: м’який знак (miakyy znak) [], Belarusian: мяккі знак (miakki znak) []). It is named so because it usually indicates softening, or palatalization, of the preceding consonant or of the group of them. ... E or E Oborotnoye (Э, э) is a letter of the Russian alphabet, representing the non-iotated vowel, IPA: or ). Code positions See also Glagolitic alphabet Categories: Cyrillic letters | Language stubs ... Yu (Ю, ÑŽ) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the iotated vowel /ju/. In common with many Cyrillic letters, it was derived from a digraph, being a ligature of Izhe (then І) or Izhei (then Н, both now И) and Uk (Ѹ, no longer in the alphabet). ... Ya (Я, я) is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the iotated vowel (IPA). ... A variety of a language is a form that differs from other forms of the language systematically and coherently. ... Chinese (written) language (pinyin: zhōngw n) written in Chinese characters The Chinese language (汉语/漢語, 华语/華語, or 中文; Pinyin: H nyǔ, Hu yǔ, or Zhōngw n) is a member of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. ... 漢字 / 汉字 Chinese character in Hànzì, Kanji, Hanja, Hán Tá»±. Red in Simplified Chinese. ... A Muslim (Arabic: مسلم, Turkish: Müslüman, Persian and Urdu: مسلمان, Bosnian: Musliman) is an adherent of Islam. ... The Hui people (Chinese: ; pinyin: ) are a Chinese ethnic group, typically distinguished by their practice of the Islamic religion. ... The Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing Arabic and various other languages, together with various closely related scripts that typically differ in the presence or absence of a few letters. ... A Chinese-Arabic-Xiaoerjing dictionary from the early days of the Peoples Republic of China. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... The Cyrillic alphabet (pronounced , also called azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters) is an alphabet used for several East and South Slavic languages—Belarusian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Rusyn, Serbian, and Ukrainian—and many other languages of the former Soviet Union, Asia and Eastern Europe. ...

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.

See also

• Diasystem

In linguistics, a diasystem is a term used in structural dialectology, to refer to a single genetic language which has two or more standard forms. ...

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

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).