Dungan language

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Dungan
Хуэйзў йүян
Huejzw jyian

Spoken in

Kyrgyzstan , Kazakhstan , Uzbekistan , Tajikistan and Turkmenistan
speaker a total of approx. 100,000
Linguistic
classification
Official status
Official language in -
Language codes
ISO 639 -1

-

ISO 639 -2

sit

ISO 639-3

dng

Bilingual sign in Dungan and Russian on a museum in Miljanfan , Kyrgyzstan

The Dungan language (Dungan: Хуэйзў йүян / Huejzw jyian ; pronunciation [Hɤuɛjtsu jyiɑn]; Chinese  東 干 語  /  东 干 语 , Pinyin Dōnggān yǔ ; Russian дунганский язык Dung is a language spoken by the Sinitic Dungans ) ethnic group living in Central Asia close to the Hui Chinese .

Dungan and Standard Chinese are largely mutually understandable . The fact that this Chinese language is written with Cyrillic letters is a unique special case.

distribution

Dungan is spoken mainly in Kyrgyzstan , with speakers in Kazakhstan , Uzbekistan and also in Russia . The ethnic group of the Dungans are the descendants of the refugees from China who moved west to Central Asia as a result of the Dungan uprisings around 1870. It is used in school lessons. During the Soviet era , there were various text books published in schools for teaching the Dungan language, a three-volume Russian-Dungan dictionary (14,000 words), the Dungan-Russian dictionary, philological monographs on the language, and books in Dungan. The first newspaper in the Dungan language, Hueyimin bo , was founded in 1932 and is still published monthly today.

According to the statistics of the Soviet census from 1970 to 1989, the Dungans retained the use of their own language much more successfully than other minorities of ethnic groups in Central Asia. After the collapse of the Soviet Union , the proportion of Dungan native speakers seems to have fallen sharply, but there are no more detailed studies on this.

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

Phonology and Vocabulary

In terms of its basic structure and vocabulary, the Dungan language is not very different from Mandarin Chinese , especially the Mandarin dialect spoken in the Shaanxi and Gansu provinces . Like other Chinese languages, Dungan is a tonal language . There are two main dialects, one with four tones and the other, which is considered a standard pronunciation, with only three tones.

The basilects of Gansu / Shaanxi Mandarin and Dungan are largely mutually understandable. Chinese journalists familiar with one of these Mandarin dialects reported that they could make themselves understood when communicating with Dungan speakers. At the basic vocabulary level, Dungan contains many words that do not appear in modern Mandarin dialects, such as: B. Arabic and Persian loanwords as well as outdated expressions from the Chinese vocabulary from the time of the Qing dynasty . In addition, the acrolects of Dungan and Gansu / Shaanxi Mandarin have diverged significantly over time and under external influences. During the 20th century, translators and intellectuals introduced many neologisms and loan translations into the Chinese language, particularly in the fields of politics and technology. Cut off from the mainstream of Chinese discourse by orthographic barriers, Dungan borrowed the words for the same areas from Russian with which it came into contact through administration and study. As a result of these borrowings, the equivalent standard Chinese names are largely unknown to the Dungans or cannot be understood by them.

Writing system

The modern Dungan alphabet, with IPA and Latin transcription

Letter IPA transcription
А / а a, ɑ a
Б / б p b
В / в v v
Г / г k G
Д / д d d
Е / е (y) e
Ё / ё yo
Ж / ж ʐ zh, rzh
Җ / җ tʂ, tɕ zh
З / з ts z
И / и i, ei i
Й / й j (y) u, (y) i
К / к k
Л / л l l
М / м m m
Н / н n n
Ң / ң ɳ ng
Ә / ә eh
О / о * ɔ O
П / п p
Р / р ɚ, r r
С / с s s
Т / т t
У / у ɤu, u u
Ў / ў u wu
Ү / ү y (y) u
Ф / ф f f
Х / х x kh
Ц / ц tsʰ ts
Ч / ч tʂʰ, tɕʰ ch
Ш / ш ʂ sh
Щ / щ ɕ shch, hs
Ъ / ъ * - "
Ы / ы ɪ, ɭɘ `i
Ь / ь * - `
Э / э ɛ egg)
Ю / ю iɤu yu
Я / я ia, iɑ ya

* The letters О , Ъ and Ь are only used in Russian loan words.

Dungan is the only variety of Chinese languages that is not normally written using Chinese characters . Originally, the Dungans, who are Muslim descendants of the Hui , wrote their language in a system based on the Arabic alphabet known as Xiao'erjing . The Soviet Union banned all Arabic scripts in the late 1920s, resulting in a Latin orthography . The Latin orthography existed until 1940, when the Soviet government introduced the current system based on the Cyrillic alphabet. The Xiao'erjing is practically extinct among the Dungans today, but has remained in limited use in some Hui communities in China.

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

literature

A number of books in the Dungan language, including textbooks, Dungan-Russian and Russo-Dungan dictionaries, an etymological dictionary of Dungan, collections of folklore, original and translated narrative literature, and poetry have been published in Kyrgyzstan . Ordinary editions consist of no more than a few hundred pieces. A newspaper in Dungan is also published.

Works by the Dungan poet Yasir Shiwaza (Iasyr Shivaza) have been translated into Russian, Standard Chinese, and a number of other languages, in some with much longer editions than the original Dungan. English translations of this, along with the original Dungan text, are available in the book by S. Rimsky-Korsakoff (1991).

  • Svetlana Rimsky-Korsakoff Dyer: Soviet Dungan: The Chinese language of central Asia: alphabet, phonology, morphology . Asian Studies Research Institute, Indiana University, 1967.
  • Svetlana Rimsky-Korsakoff Dyer: Iasyr Shivaza: The Life and Works of a Soviet Dungan Poet . 1991, ISBN 3-631-43963-6 .
  • Heinz Riedlinger: Likbez: Literacy among the Soviet Dungans since 1927 and its connection with the Latinization efforts in China. Brockmeyer, Bochum 1989 (China topics; Volume 37)
  • Dunganskaya enciklopedija . Biskek: Ilim 2005, ISBN 5-8355-1435-2
  • Cihai. Shanghai cishu chubanshe, Shanghai 2002, ISBN 7-5326-0839-5

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Cihai , p. 358
  2. Archive link ( Memento of the original from April 24, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / en.chinabroadcast.cn
  3. pinyin.info
  4. ↑ Based on the English version.