| Tangwang | |
|---|---|
| Native to | China |
| Region | Gansu |
Native speakers | (20,000 cited 1995)[1] |
| Arabic, Latin | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | None (mis) |
| Glottolog | tang1373[2] |
The Tangwang language (Chinese: 唐汪话; pinyin: Tángwànghuà) is a variety of Mandarin Chinese heavily influenced by the Mongolic Santa language (Dongxiang). It is spoken in a dozen or so villages in Dongxiang Autonomous County, Gansu Province, China. The linguist Mei W. Lee-Smith calls this creole language the "Tangwang language" (Chinese: 唐汪话), based on the names of the two largest villages (Tangjia 唐家 and Wangjia 汪家, parts of Tangwang town) where it is spoken.[3]
Speakers
According to Lee-Smith (1996), the Tangwang language is spoken by about 20,000 people living in the north-eastern part of the Dongxiang Autonomous County (Tangwang town). These people self-identify as Dongxiang (Santa) or Hui people. The Tangwang speakers don't speak Dongxiang language.[3]
Description
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.[3]
Like standard Mandarin, Tangwang is a tonal language. However, grammatical particles, which are typically borrowed from Mandarin but used in the way Dongxiang morphemes would be used in Dongxiang, do not carry tones.[3]
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 (but only four of them, instead of eight in Dongxiang).[3]
The word order of Tangwang is the same as Dongxiang subject-object-verb form.
Tangwang combines the characteristics of Mandarin Chinese and Dongxiang Mongolian.[4] The hybrid language is a symbol of language blending. According to Lee-Smith, the blending is caused by the Silk Road.[3]
See also
References
- ↑ Smith, Norval (1994). "An Annotated List of Creoles, Pidgins, and Mixed Languages". in Arends, Jacque. Pidgins and Creoles. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. p. 371.
- ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds (2017). "Tangwang". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. http://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/tang1373.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 Lee-Smith, Mei W. (1996). "The Tangwang Language". in Wurm, Stephen A.. Atlas of Languages of Intercultural Communication in the Pacific, Asia, and the Americas, Volume 2, Part 1. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 875–882. ISBN 978-3-11-013417-9. https://books.google.com/books?id=glU0vte5gSkC.
- ↑ Wurm, S. A. (1995). "The Silk Road and Hybridized Languages in North-Western China". Diogenes 43 (171): 53–62. doi:10.1177/039219219504317107.
Further reading
- Zhong, Jinwen 钟进文 (2007) (in zh). Gān-Qīng dìqū tèyǒu mínzú yǔyán wénhuà de qūyù tèzhēng. Beijing Shi: Zhongyang minzu daxue chubanshe. ISBN 978-7-81108-462-7.
- Xu, Dan 徐丹 (2014) (in zh). Tángwānghuà yánjiū. Beijing Shi: Minzu chubanshe. ISBN 978-7-105-13288-1.
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