The Santa language, also known as Dongxiang (), is a

Mongolic language The Mongolic languages are a language family spoken by the Mongolic peoples in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, North Asia and East Asia, mostly in Mongolia and surrounding areas and in Kalmykia and Buryatia. The best-known member of this language ...

spoken by the

Dongxiang people The Dongxiang people (autonym: '' Sarta'' or ''Santa'' (撒爾塔); , Xiao'erjing: دْوݣسِيْاݣذُ) are Mongolic people and one of 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China. Most of the Dongxiang live ...

Northwest China Northwest China () is a statistical region of China which includes the autonomous regions of Xinjiang and Ningxia and the provinces of Shaanxi, Gansu and Qinghai. It has an area of 3,107,900 km2. The region is characterized by a (semi-)arid con ...

Dialects

There are no dialects in strict sense, but three local varieties (''tuyu'') can be found: Suonanba (ca. 50% of all Dongxiang speakers), Wangjiaji (ca. 30% of all Dongxiang speakers) and Sijiaji (ca. 20% of all Dongxiang speakers).

Phonology

Except for a limited number of cases there is no vowel harmony and the harmonic rules governing the suffix pronunciation are by far not as strict as those of Mongolian.

Consonants

Dongxiang has 29 consonants:

Vowels

Dongxiang has 7 vowels. Unlike other neighboring Mongolic languages, it has neither

vowel harmony In phonology, vowel harmony is an assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, mea ...

nor distinctions of

vowel length In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, ...

Grammar

Morphology

Plural marking

* -la (remaining of nouns) * -sla/-sila (certain nouns and pronouns) * -pi (relatives)

Cases

Santa/Dongxiang has 6 cases.

Syntax

In common with other Mongolic languages, Dongxiang is spoken as an SOV language. In Linxia, however, under the influence of the

Mandarin Chinese Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language ...

dialects spoken by the neighbouring Hui people, sentences of the SVO type have also been observed.

Writing system

Knowledge of

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

is widespread among the Sarta and as a result, they often use the Arabic script to write down their language informally (cf. the

Xiao'erjing Xiao'erjing or Xiao'erjin or Xiaor jin or in its shortened form, Xiaojing, literally meaning "children's script" or "minor script" (cf. "original script" referring to the original Perso-Arabic script; zh, s=本经, t=本經, p=Běnjīng, Xiao ...

system that was used by Hui people); however, this has been little investigated by scholars. , the official

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and th ...

for Dongxiang, developed on the basis of the

Monguor Mongour, formerly also known by various names including Tu and Dchiahour, may refer to: * Monguor people * Monguor language The Monguor language (; also written Mongour and Mongor) is a Mongolic language of its Shirongolic branch and is part of ...

alphabet, remained in the experimental stage.

Numerals

The Tangwang language

There are about 20,000 people in the north-eastern part Dongxiang County, who self-identify as Dongxiang or Hui people who do not speak Dongxiang, but natively speak a Dongxiang-influenced form of

. The linguist Mei W. Lee-Smith calls this the "Tangwang language" (), based on the names of the two largest villages (Tangjia and Wangjia, parts of Tangwang

Town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an ori ...

) where it is spoken and argues it is a

creolized language A creole language, or simply creole, is a stable natural language that develops from the simplifying and mixing of different languages into a new one within a fairly brief period of time: often, a pidgin evolved into a full-fledged language. Wh ...

. According to Lee-Smith, the Tangwang language uses mostly Mandarin words and morphemes with Dongxiang grammar. Besides Dongxiang loanwords, Tangwang also has a substantial number of Arabic and Persian loanwords. Like Standard Mandarin, Tangwang is a tonal language, but grammatical particles, which are typically borrowed from Mandarin, but are used in the way Dongxiang morphemes would be used in Dongxiang, don't carry tones. For example, while the Mandarin plural suffix ''-men'' (们) has only very restricted usage (it can be used with personal pronouns and some nouns related to people), Tangwang uses it, in the form ''-m'', universally, the way Dongxiang would use its plural suffix ''-la''. Mandarin pronoun ''ni'' (你) can be used in Tangwang as a possessive suffix (meaning "your"). Unlike Mandarin, but like Dongxiang, Tangwang has grammatical cases as well (however only four of them, unlike eight in Dongxiang).

References

Bibliography

* * * *

External links

The Dongxiang Mongols and Their Language

An example of the Dongxiang language being spoken
{{Mongolic languages Agglutinative languages Languages of China Southern Mongolic languages Dongxiang people Subject–object–verb languages Mongolic languages