The Shirongol, Shirongolic or Southeast Mongolian (or more rarely, the Dolot languages) are a subgroup of the
Mongolic languages
The Mongolic languages are a language family spoken by the Mongolic peoples in North Asia, East Asia, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe mostly in Mongolia and surrounding areas and in Kalmykia and Buryatia. The best-known member of this languag ...
in the Southern Mongolian subgroup. They are spoken in the
Gansu
Gansu is a provinces of China, province in Northwestern China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeastern part of the province. The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibetan Plateau, Ti ...
and
Qinghai
Qinghai is an inland Provinces of China, province in Northwestern China. It is the largest provinces of China, province of China (excluding autonomous regions) by area and has the third smallest population. Its capital and largest city is Xin ...
provinces in
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
.
History
It is possible that Proto-Shirongolic and
Eastern Yugur were separated between the 14th and 16th centuries. The Shirongolic languages separated in the 16th century. Since then, they have been retreating in favor of
Mandarin
Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to:
Language
* Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country
** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China
** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...
.
Characteristics
Contrary to the
Central Mongolic languages and
Moghol, the Southern Mongolic languages (and therefore Shirongol) and
Daur are not synharmonic, according to Janhunen. The Shirongolic languages have been strongly influenced by Mandarin and the
Tibetan languages
The Tibetic languages form a well-defined group of languages descending from Old Tibetan.Tournadre, Nicolas. 2014. "The Tibetic languages and their classification." In ''Trans-Himalayan linguistics, historical and descriptive linguistics of the H ...
. Like all Mongolic languages, their word order is
SOV, have
agglutinative
In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes (word parts), each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglu ...
morphology and have
vowel harmony
In phonology, vowel harmony is a phonological rule in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – must share certain distinctive features (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, meaning tha ...
.
Internal classification
The Shirongolic family groups together the
Bonan,
Dongxiang,
Kangjia and
Monguor languages.
Glottolog
''Glottolog'' is an open-access online bibliographic database of the world's languages. In addition to listing linguistic materials ( grammars, articles, dictionaries) describing individual languages, the database also contains the most up-to-d ...
separates the Mongghul and Mangghuer dialects into separate languages and proposes the Baoanic and Monguoric groups. Dialects are indicated in ''italic''.
Shirongol
**Baoanic
***Bonan
****''Jishishan''
****''Tongren''
****
Wutun (mixed Bonan-Mandarin)
***Dongxiang/
Santa
****''Sijiaji''
****''Suonanba''
****''Wangjiaji''
****
Tangwang (mixed Santa-Mandarin)
***
Kangjia
**
Monguor/Monguoric/Tu languages
***''Mongghuer''
***''Mongghul''
Ethnologue
''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensive catalogue of languages. It w ...
does not use this classification. It instead groups the southern Mongolian languages in a "Mongour" group.
* Mongour languages
** Bonan
eh** Dongxiang
ce** Kangjia
xs** Tu
jg** Eastern Yugur
uy
References
See also
*
Mongolic languages
The Mongolic languages are a language family spoken by the Mongolic peoples in North Asia, East Asia, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe mostly in Mongolia and surrounding areas and in Kalmykia and Buryatia. The best-known member of this languag ...
Bibliography
*
*
* Lee-Smith, Mei W.; Wurm, Stephen A. (1996), "The Wutun language", in Wurm, Stephen A.; Mühlhäusler, Peter; Tyron, Darrell T. (eds.), ''Atlas of languages of intercultural communication in the Pacific, Asia, and the Americas, Volume 2, Part 1. (Volume 13 of Trends in Linguistics, Documentation Series)'', Walter de Gruyter, ,
International Council for Philosophy and Humanistic Studies, North China: Intercultural communications involving languages other than Chinese
* Rybatzki, Volker. 2003. "Intra-Mongolic taxonomy." In Janhunen, Juha (ed). ''The Mongolic Languages'', 364-390. Routledge Language Family Series 5. London: Routledge.
{{Portal, Language, China
Southern Mongolic languages