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 Tibet ...

– Qinghai

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 lang ...

(also called the Amdo 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, the same holds for Mangghuer and

Sinitic languages The Sinitic languages (漢語族/汉语族), often synonymous with "Chinese languages", are a group of East Asian analytic languages that constitute the major branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is frequently proposed that there is ...

, 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 followingDpal-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 {{mong-lang-stub