Орталық Азиядағы Дунган тілі

Sinitic language spoken in Central Asia

Dungan ('/d//ʊ//ŋ//ɡ//ɑː//n/ or '/d//ʌ//ŋ//g//ə//n/) is a Sinitic languageDifferent from Standard Chinese in phonology and lexicon. spoken primarily in Kazakhstan, Russia and Kyrgyzstan by the Dungan people, an ethnic group related to the Hui people of China. Although it is derived from the Central Plains Mandarin of Gansu and Shaanxi, it is written in Cyrillic (or Xiao'erjing) and contains loanwords and archaisms not found in other modern varieties of Mandarin.

The Dungan people of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan (with smaller groups living in other post Soviet states) are the descendants of several groups of the Hui people that migrated to the region in the 1870s and the 1880s after the defeat of the Dungan revolt in Northwestern China. The Hui of Northwestern China (often referred to as "Dungans" or "Tungani" by the 19th century western writers as well as by members of Turkic nationalities in China and Central Asia) would normally speak the same Mandarin dialect as the Han people in the same area (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. While not constituting a separate language, these words, phrases and turns of speech, known as Huihui hua (回回話, "Hui speech"), served as markers of group identity. 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. In the Soviet Union, a written standard of the Dungan language was developed, based on a dialect of the Gansu Province, rather than the Beijing base of Standard Chinese. The language was used in the schools in Dungan villages. In the Soviet time there were several school textbooks published for studying the Dungan language, a three volume Russian–Dungan dictionary (14,000 words), the Dungan–Russian dictionary, linguistics monographs on the language and books in Dungan. The first Dungan language newspaper was established in 1932; it continues publication today in weekly form. 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".

There is a varying degree of mutual intelligibility between Dungan and various Mandarin dialects. Central Plains Mandarin varieties are understood by Dungans. 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.

Dungan is spoken primarily in Kyrgyzstan, with speakers in Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan as well. The Dungan ethnic group are the descendants of refugees from China who migrated west into Central Asia. 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. +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

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

In basic structure and vocabulary, the Dungan language is not very different from Mandarin Chinese, specifically a variety of Zhongyuan Mandarin (not Lan Yin Mandarin) spoken in the southern part of the province of Gansu and the western part of the valley of Guanzhong in the province of Shaanxi. Like other Chinese varieties, Dungan is tonal. There are two main dialects, one with 4 tones and the other, considered standard, with 3 tones in the final position in phonetic words and 4 tones in the nonfinal position.

Tones in Dungan are marked with nothing (tone 1), a ъ (tone 2) and ь (tone 3). + Tonal comparison between Dungan and MandarinStandard Chinese tone numberDungan tone numberTone nameDungan exampleChinese characterGansu DunganShaanxi DunganStandard ChineseReferencesOrthographyIPAOrthographyIPAPitch patternTone contourPitch patternTone contourPitch patternTone contour11陰平(yīnpíng)хуа/xwǎ/花/xwá/Rising (24)Falling (51)High (55)Standard Gansu Dungan doesn't distinguish tone 1 and tone 2 only in the final position of phonetic words.2陽平(yángpíng)хуа/xwǎ/華/xwǎ/Rising (24)Rising (35)32上聲(shǎngshēng)вə(ъ)/vɤ̂/我/wò/Falling (51)Falling (53)Low/dipping (1, 214)43去聲(qùshēng)чў(ь)/t͡ɕú/去/t͡ɕŷ/High (44)High (44)Falling (52)Some syllables originating in tone 4 fall into tone 1 in modern Mandarin.00輕聲
(qīngshēng)зы/t͡sɨ/子/t͡sɹ̩/ShortVariesShortVariesShortVariesActual pitch depends on the preceding syllable.

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. However, even at the level of basic vocabulary, Dungan contains many words not present in modern Mandarin dialects, such as Russian, Arabic, Turkic, and Persian loanwords. Furthermore, Dungan contains some archaic Qing dynasty era Chinese vocabulary. Because of this, some Dungan vocabulary may sound old fashioned to Chinese people. For example, they refer to a President as an "Emperor" (Хуаңды/皇帝, huan'g di) and call government offices yamen (ямын/衙門, ya min), 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. 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 a result of these borrowings, the equivalent standard Chinese terms are not widely known or understood among the Dungan.