The Monguor language (; also written Mongour and Mongor) is a
Mongolic language of its Shirongolic branch and is part of the
Gansu
Gansu (, ; alternately romanized as Kansu) is a province in Northwest China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeast part of the province.
The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibe ...
–
Qinghai
Qinghai (; alternately romanized as Tsinghai, Ch'inghai), also known as Kokonor, is a landlocked province in the northwest of the People's Republic of China. It is the fourth largest province of China by area and has the third smallest po ...
sprachbund
A sprachbund (, lit. "language federation"), also known as a linguistic area, area of linguistic convergence, or diffusion area, is a group of languages that share areal features resulting from geographical proximity and language contact. The lan ...
(also called the
Amdo
Amdo ( �am˥˥.to˥˥ ) is one of the three traditional Tibetan regions, the others being U-Tsang in the west and Kham in the east. Ngari (including former Guge kingdom) in the north-west was incorporated into Ü-Tsang. Amdo is also the bi ...
sprachbund). There are several dialects, mostly spoken by the
Monguor people. A written script was devised for Huzhu Monguor (Mongghul) in the late 20th century but has been little used.
A division into two languages, namely Mongghul in
Huzhu Tu Autonomous County and Mangghuer in
Minhe Hui and Tu Autonomous County, is considered necessary by some linguists. While Mongghul was under strong influence from
Amdo Tibetan
Amdo Tibetan (; also called ''Am kä'') is the Tibetic language spoken in Amdo (now mostly in Qinghai, some in Ngawa and Gannan). It has two dialects, the farmer dialect and the nomad dialect.
Amdo is one of the three branches of traditional c ...
, the same holds for Mangghuer and
Sinitic languages
The Sinitic languages (漢語族/汉语族), often synonymous with "Chinese languages", are a language group, group of East Asian analytic languages that constitute the major branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages, Sino-Tibetan language family. ...
, and local varieties of Chinese such as the
Gangou language were in turn influenced by Monguor.
Phonology
Vowels
* Vowel sounds may also be nasalized when preceding a nasal consonant, in different environments.
*Vowels may also undergo a devoicing process in certain phonetic environments.
Consonants
* can also be heard as allophones or , occurring in free variation.
* can be heard as a voiced fricative within the onset of a stressed syllable, or of a word-initial syllable. It can also be heard as a flap sound intervocalically in the onset of an unstressed syllable. In a syllable-coda position, it is heard as a rhotic vowel sound.
* can have a spirantized allophone of strongly in stressed syllables.
Numerals
Mongolian numerals such as the following
[Dpal-ldan-bkra-shis, Slater ''et al.'' 1996: 4] are only in use in the Mongghul dialect, while Mangghuer speakers have switched to counting in Chinese.
Note that while the Mongolian script has only ''arban'' for 'ten', Middle Mongolian *''harpa/n'' including *''h'' can be reconstructed from the scripts.
[Svantesson ''et al.'' 2005: 130]
Notes
References
*Dpal-ldan-bkra-shis, Keith Slater, et al. (1996): ''Language Materials of China’s Monguor Minority: Huzhu Mongghul and Minhe Mangghuer''. Sino-Platonic papers no. 69.
*
Georg, Stefan (2003): Mongghul. In: Janhunen, Juha (ed.) (2003): ''The Mongolic languages''. London: Routledge: 286-306.
*Slater, Keith W. (2003): ''A grammar of Mangghuer: A Mongolic language of China's Qinghai-Gansu sprachbund''. London/New York: RoutledgeCurzon.
* Svantesson, Jan-Olof, Anna Tsendina, Anastasia Karlsson, Vivan Franzén (2005): ''The Phonology of Mongolian''. New York: Oxford University Press.
*
Zhàonàsītú 照那斯图 (1981): ''Tǔzúyǔ jiǎnzhì'' 土族语简志 (''Introduction to the Tu language''). Běijīng 北京: Mínzú chūbǎnshè 民族出版社.
*
*
*
External links
*
he Tu ethnic minority http://www.china.org.cn/e-groups/shaoshu/shao-2-tu.htm*ELAR archive o
Mongghul language documentation materials
Agglutinative languages
Southern Mongolic languages
Languages of China
L
Mongolic languages
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