‘Dungan’ refers to a small group of the ethnic Chinese Muslim who fled from northwestern China to Central Asia in the 1870s. The Dungan language has undergone significant change through sustained contact with neighboring ethnic groups and has absorbed many elements from the dominant language in the region.
Key words: Dungan; language, Chinese Muslim; Cyrillic-based script, language mixing
The term ‘Dungan’ refers to a small group of Chinese Sunni Muslims who fled from northwestern China to Central Asia in the 1870s. They are widely distributed across Eurasia: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Ukraine. The Dungan population is estimated to be around 160,000, with the majority residing in Kyrgyzstan (76,573) and Kazakhstan (78,817), and a smaller number in Russia (3,028)) and Uzbekistan (approximately 2,000, but no official figure is available).
Dungan is the exonym for the ethnic group. Speakers in some areas prefer to be called Hui, their autonym. Opinions are divided over the meaning and origin of the term.
The Dungans maintain their ethnic identity and material and spiritual culture.Their unique linguistic feature of speaking Chinese with a Cyrillic-based writing system makes the Dungan language stand out among the rich varieties of Chinese dialects and demonstrates that not all Sinitic languages are written with the Sinographic script, i.e. Chinese characters.
Unless otherwise stated, the discussion in this article is based on the first author’s field notes between 1996 and 2017.
The invention of the Dungan writing system
The invention of the Dungan writing system was believed to have connections with the northwestern Chinese Muslim communities who adopted Sino-Islamic writing practices, but such views require historical and textual evidence to substantiate. The relationships between the two await further investigation.
The Dungan writing system underwent a complex process of transformation from Arabic-based to Latin-based, and eventually to Cyrillic-based. This was closely linked to broader political and cultural developments in Central Asia under the rule of the Soviet Union.
The Dungans did not have a writing system of their own until 1927 when an Arabic alphabet-based writing system was adopted, but it was replaced by a Latin-based system only a year later as a result of the shift of language policy of the Soviet Union. The first Dungan language primer in Latin script was published in 1929, prompting the emergence of some 30 Dungan language textbooks within six years from 1932 to 1938. Approximately 100,000 copies were distributed in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan alone.
In 1932, the Latin-script Dungan newspaper Дун Хуәщир东火星, (The Eastern Spark) was founded, whose primary objectives were to publish literary works by Dungan writers using their own language and scripts. Their works became models for younger generations, and the newspaper became a major platform for the development of Dungan literature.
By the late 1930s, the Soviet Union undertook a major change in its language policy. The Latinised written scripts for minority groups were required to shift to the Cyrillic alphabet, with the aim of bringing ethnic minority languages in line with Russian. Plans were delayed by the outbreak of World War II, until the early 1950s when the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union set up a special committee to oversee the implementation of the Cyrillic-based Dungan writing system. The system utilises 33 Russian letters and five additional symbols to accommodate phonological features specific to the Dungan language.
Shifting from Latin-scripts to Cyrillic alphabet did not pose major difficulties for the Dungans. During the period of the Soviet Union, Russian functioned as lingua franca for various ethnic groups in Central Asia. Dungan community schools largely adopted Russian as the medium of instruction, which created favourable conditions for the Dungans to master a Cyrillic-based writing system.
The Cyrillic-based Dungan script allowed a sizeable number of textbooks and reference works to be made available in Dungan schools. A new Department of Dungan Studies was established within the National Academy of Sciences of Kyrgyzstan, which became a major research center for Dungan language and culture. Quite a significant number of well-known literary works were translated into the Dungan language. At the same time, the rich corpus of myths, legends, and folktales preserved within the Dungan oral tradition was systematically collected and recorded in the Dungan language.
Characteristics of the Dungan language
Dungan exhibits features of a Sinitic variety shaped by Soviet multilingualism. Also, the influence of Islamic vocabulary has made itself felt. Dungan is historically connected to Muslim religious life and to a wider Islamic cultural sphere.
In terms of phonology, vocabulary, and grammar, the Dungan language can be described as a variety of the Northwestern dialect of Chinese. However, it has undergone significant change over more than 140 years of sustained contact and coexistence with neighbouring ethnic groups, from whom it acquires distinctive linguistic features. For example, ‘to drive a car’ is expressed in Dungan as ё машина [iɔ24 ma51 ʂʅ24 nɛ51], 吆马什那, where the first element ё [iɔ24] comes from the Chinese verb 吆 yao ‘to loudly urge or command (animals).’ Historically, daily transportation primarily involved horse-drawn or ox-drawn carts; drivers would loudly urge the animals to move forward. When cars came into use among the Dungans, they borrowed the Russian word машина [ma51 ʂʅ24 nɛ51] and combined it with the Dungan word ё to form a hybrid expression ё машина (to loudly shout at or urge the vehicle to go).
Loanwords in Dungan are primarily from Russian. For example, in Russian complex sentences, the main clause and subordinate clause are often linked by the conjunction что [shto]. Some Dungans employ this structure in everyday speech, such as“’he doctor said, что Fatima has caught a cold.’ In addition, certain expressions in Dungan reflect direct calques from Russian. For instance, the Russian expression for ‘to be discharged from the hospital’ is Меня выписать из больницы, Menya vypisat’ iz bol’nitsy (to remove my name from the hospital register) where the verb выписать vypisat’ not only carries the meaning ‘to remove from a register’ but is also fundamentally related to the notion of ‘writing’. Influenced by this semantic structure in Russian, Dungan speakers may thus express ‘to be discharged from the hospital’ as ‘to be written out from the hospital.’
Although the core of the Dungan language remains Chinese, it has developed distinctive features of its own, which can be summarised as follows.
Some expressions are from Chinese, with broadened meanings. A good example is the character та [tʻa24], 拓ta (to rub//print), which gives rise to terms such as та тўён [tʻa24 tʻu51 iaŋ44], 拓图样ta tuyang (to rub an image) for describing the act of taking a picture.
Dungan preserves many old Chinese expressions. Examples include җуонзы [tʂuaŋ44·tsɿ], from Chinese状子zhuangzi (legal petition); ямын [ia24 məŋ51], 衙门 yamen, (official office), and гуанҗя [kuæ᷈24·tɕia], 官家 guanjia (the authorities). In rural areas, leaders may still be called тузы [tʻou24 tsɿ44], 头子 touzi (head). Attempts were made to standardise certain terms in the written language. For example, гуанҗя [kuæ᷈24·tɕia] with гуйҗя [kuei24 tɕia24], 国家 guojia (state, nation) in written language. The Dungan newspapers even published Russian-Dungan glossaries to promote such usage.
Dungan ‘written language’ exhibits strong colloquial features. This is because many Hui migrants to Central Asia were originally illiterate and the written language was fundamentally grounded in spoken usage. For example, the discourse particle ни ni, occurs in daily expressions like щени [ɕiə51·ni], 写呢xieni, (writing). The famous exhortation by Vladimir Lenin, ‘Study! Study! And Study!’ was adopted in Dungan schools as a motivational motto and rendered in Dungan as ‘Нянни! Нянни! Ёнянни! [niæ᷈44·ni niæ᷈44 ·ni iɔ44·niæ᷈44 ·ni], 念呢！念呢！要念呢！nianni! nianni! yaonianni! ‘Read! Read! And Must Read!’
Sociolinguistic features of Dungan language use
Living in the multiethnic environment of Central Asia and shaped by more than a century of historical and social transformation in the region, the Dungans have experienced significant social change. This is particularly evident in their language use, which displays a high degree of complexity.
Multilingualism
Since their settlement in Central Asia in the second half of the 19th century, the Dungans have maintained close contact with the Russian culture and the cultures of Turkic-speaking peoples. Through extensive and direct contact with neighboring ethnic groups, the Dungans have become multilingual. In particular, Russian has been the medium of communication between the Dungans and other ethnic groups. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and with the promotion of ‘national languages’ in Central Asian countries, an increasing number of Dungans have become proficient in Turkic languages such as Kyrgyz and Kazakh.
Regional variation
The Dungans are generally divided into two major subgroups based on language and ancestral origin: those from Gansu province, represented by the community in Bishkek, the capital and largest city of Kyrgystan; and those from Shaanxi province, represented by the community in Tokmak, a smaller city in Kyrgystan. After the invention of the Dungan writing system, the Gansu dialect served as the standard language. However, this standard is primarily manifested in textbooks or literary works, while regional dialectal differences remain prevalent in everyday speech. Regional differences in language use are also reflected in urban-rural variations. In urban areas, Dungan youth attend schools and work in predominantly Russian-speaking environments. Given there are generally no Dungan language schools in cities, many urban Dungans have limited exposure to their native language and rarely speak it. In contrast, in rural areas, Dungan is the primary language of daily communication, while Russian is used mainly for cross-culture communication.
With the increasing contact between Central Asian countries and China, the Dungans have also endeavored to promote newly-learned Chinese vocabulary items among the Dungan community. Dungans who traveled to China suggested standardising usage according to contemporary Chinese norms. For example, the word ‘match’ is now uniformly represented as хуəцэ [xuə51 tsʻɛ24], from standard Chinese火柴 huochai.
Resilience
The Dungan language exhibits a strong capacity to adapt to changing circumstances and continues to develop. The Dungans have been able to maintain a sense of ethnic identity by continuing to use their native language at home and at community gatherings.
However, as a relatively small ethnic group, the Dungans are aware of the limited scope of using their native language for communicating with neighbouring ethnic groups. Maintaining proficiency in the Dungan language and acquiring skills in more dominant languages allows their culture to continue. The transition from ‘monolingualism’ to ‘bilingualism’ and ‘multilingualism’ among the Dungans reflects processes of cultural adaptation and integration.
The future trajectory of the Dungan language
The pervasive influence of Russian and other dominant languages of Central Asia has caused the Dungan language to become marginalised and the number of young people who can speak the Dungan language fluently is declining. Consequently, the language is moving toward endangerment and has been classified by UNESCO as a ‘vulnerable’ language under its ‘Yellow Alert’ category.
The situation of Dungan script is even more precarious. While Dungan as a spoken language has undergone significant change, it retains core characteristics of the Northwestern dialect of Chinese. With the increasing influence of China on Central Asian countries, the connection between the Dungan language and its linguistic source has become increasingly close. Moreover, the presence of Chinese language centers across Central Asia, coupled with high numbers of people wanting to learn Chinese has reinforced the role of Dungan language in facilitating people-to-people bonds between Central Asia and China.
The invention of the Dungan script played an important role in promoting Dungan cultural development and improving the educational level of the community. However, the use of Dungan script has largely been confined to the Dungan community. This has prompted younger generations to regard the Dungan language as not useful in terms of education and employment. This situation was further exacerbated after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In post-independence Central Asian countries, the emphasis on ‘national languages’ and the implementation of Latinisation reforms have greatly reduced the teaching, publication and use of Dungan scripts.
The number of Dungans capable of reading and using Dungan scripts is also decreasing. A growing number of Dungans have begun to question the ‘creation’ of the script, criticising portions of the writing system for being inconsistent with Chinese linguistic conventions. Scholars of the Dungan community in Central Asia have initiated various discussions regarding the future trajectory of the Dungan script, with opinions sharply divided. One camp, primarily consisting of scholars working on Dungan language, advocates for the continued refinement of the existing Dungan script. The other camp proposes replacing the current Dungan script with either Chinese characters or Pinyin, the Romanised Chinese phonetic system.
Although debates are intense, there is consensus that, with economic and cultural exchanges continuing to increase between Central Asian countries and China, the trend of the Dungan language gradually moving toward Standard Chinese Mandarin is highly likely. In current Dungan newspapers, Pinyin is widely used, along with standardised modern Chinese vocabulary. Further, amid the demand to learn Chinese in Central Asia, many young Dungans travel to China for study and can write in Chinese characters. If this trend continues, it may indicate that, in the future, the Dungan writing system might gradually move away from the Cyrillic alphabet. While switching entirely to Chinese characters may seem unlikely in the immediate future, the alignment of this development with the Latinisation of scripts in Central Asian countries points to a strong possibility for the ‘Pinyinisation’ of the Dungan script.
Authors: DING, Hong is a professor at Minzu University of China. MA, Hongyu is a doctoral student with the School of Ethnology and Sociology, Minzu University of China.
This article was translated from Chinese into English by Professor Yongxian Luo.
Image: Dungan women posing for a photoshoot in traditional Dungan clothing, 2004. Credit: Professor Hai Feng.Wiki Commons.
