Language
The Dungan language, which the Dungan people call "Hui language" (Хуэйзў йүян or Huejzw jyian), is similar to Mandarin Chinese Zhongyuan dialect which is widely spoken in the south of Gansu and the west of Guanzhong in Shaanxi in China.
Like other Chinese languages, 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.
Despite having many common Chinese vocabulary, some Dungan vocabulary may sound 'nostalgic' to Chinese people. They call "President" as "Emperor" (“Хуангди”，huan'g-di), "government offices" as "yamen(ямын，ya-min)", a classical name for mandarin's offices in ancient China. It also contains many loanwords from Arabic, Persian, and Turkic. Since the 1950s, the language is written in Cyrillic script, making it the only Chinese dialects that are completely written in pinyin.
Unlike other minority nationalities in Central Asia, such as the local Koreans, most Dungan people are trilingual. More than two-thirds of the Dungan also speak Russian, and a small proportion can speak Kyrgyz or other languages belonging to the titular nationalities of the countries where they live.
Read more about this topic: Dungan People
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“One who speaks a foreign language just a little takes more pleasure in it than one who speaks it well. Enjoyment belongs to those who know things halfway.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)
“Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)