User:Ozayr2001/Eastern Yugur

Eastern Yugur, also known as Shira Yughur or ŋgar, is the Mongolic language spoken within the Yugur nationality in the Gansu region of China. The other language spoken within the same community is Western Yugur, which is a Turkic language. The terms may also indicate the speakers of these languages, and both are non-written. Eastern Yugur is also not taught in any schools or used in any media and the speakers themselves comprise of roughly one-third of the entire Yugur population. Traditionally, both languages are indicated by the term Yellow Uygur, from the autonym of the Yugur. Eastern Yugur speakers are said to have passive bilingualism with Southern Mongolian, the standard spoken in China.

Eastern Yugur is a threatened language with an aging population of about 4,000 fluent speakers. Language contact with neighboring languages, particularly Chinese, has noticeably affected the language competency of younger speakers. Some younger speakers have also begun to lose their ability to distinguish between different phonetic shades within the language, indicating a weaker language competency.

Grigory Potanin recorded a glossary of Salar, Western Yugur, and Eastern Yugur in his 1893 book written in Russian, The Tangut-Tibetan Borderlands of China and Central Mongolia.

History
It is unclear when exactly the Eastern and Western Yugur populations came to live together. The Western Yugurs are considered to be descendants of a group Uyghurs who fled towards Gansu after the collapse of the Uyghur Empire, while the Easter Yugurs are considered to be descendants of some Mongolic-speaking group invading northern China during the thirteenth century. Presumably, the Yugurs once used the Huihu language although there are few traces of it.

The first known research was conducted in 1893 by Grigory Potanin in his book which contained about 200 words of the language. The first actual linguist to conduct research on Eastern Yugur was Sergey Malov in 1950, although his research on the language was still relatively undeveloped overall as his primary focus was on Sarygh Yughur, aka Western Yugur. Information on the language began to increase during the Sino-Soviet expeditions in the 1950s, such as the joint work of E. R. Tenishev and B. X. Todaeva on the Eastern and Western Yugur languages. Subsequently, Chinese researchers also began publishing their research on the language following the political events in China during the 1980s. Being an unwritten language, there are differences in spelling between researchers especially when comparing modern reports to the initial works on the language.

There is some evidence of varieties or dialects of the language existing though the extent to which each variety differs from another is not clear. There are said to be Qinglong and Hongshiwo dialects with some minor phonetic variation between the languages. Eastern Yugur also seems to be somewhat related to other languages in the Gansu region such as Monguor, Baoan, and Dongxiang as they share some common Mongolic characteristics.

Currently, Eastern Yugur is an endangered language, with most fluent speakers being over the age of 60 and even some being older than 80. Most speakers under the age of 60 have had their language competency significantly affected by neighboring languages such as Chinese.

Phonology
The phonemes /ç, çʰ, ɕ, ɕʰ, ʂ, ʑ/ appear exclusively in Chinese loanwords.

Vowel length is also distributed.

Vowel Phonetics
Some phonology of the language is said to be changing, noticeably, within the vowel /ɐ/. Eastern Yugur has a distinctive feature of vowel duration within the language. There is a noticeable difference between short and long vowels just like in the Mongolian language. However, new speakers of Eastern Yugur are increasingly unable to to distinguish between words that contain short and long vowels e.g. “xana”(where)---“xanaa-”(to cough), “xan-”(satisfy) ---“xaan”(the king/emperor), “xura”(rain) --- “xuraa-”(to fill). For many speakers, these words are homophones and cannot be distinguished through vowel duration variations alone. Some speakers can distinguish these words through the help of grammatical devices (such as suffixes).

In unstressed syllables, /ɐ/ is generally reduced when speaking. Despite technically coming from a Mongolic language, Eastern Yugur words are different from Mongolian words in that the stress of the word falls on the last syllable as opposed to the first syllable. This is attributed to the influence of the Turkic-based Western Yugur on the language. /i/ is sometimes reduced through vowel devoicing, a phenomenon that exists in other languages such as Japanese. "ʧiʤə” (human back) is one word where /i/ would be devoiced. /ɐ/ and /ɔ/ are occasionally devoiced as well such as in “ʧɑgtǎɢɑi” (cheek) and “qɔqɔ” (body) respectively.

There are some diphthongs that exist in Eastern Yugur e.g. /ɐi, ɔi, əi/ etc. /ɐ/ can be diphthongized in some words and younger speakers are generally more likely to diphthongize /ɐ/ than older speakers. This is due to the influence of Chinese on Eastern Yugur which is more apparent in younger speakers.

Word Structure
Every word consists of vowels and/or consonants and the minimal amount of syllables that can be present is a single vowel (V). This vowel can be followed and/or preceded by other consonants (CV, VC, CVC). Clusters of consonants are also allowed in the beginning as (CCV, CCVC). However, strong obstruents and fricatives cannot be at the end of a word with the exception of s.

Lexicon
Being a Mongolic language, Eastern Yugur contains many words that have Mongolic roots. It also contains phonetic variants of Western Mongolic words, e.g. wiji ‘feeding bottle’, gha(di)sin ‘peg’, hücü ‘fur-lined coat’, xalaasin ‘patch’. Some altered versions of Mongolic words also exist as cognates, such as labcigh ‘leaf’ (< *nabcin), honis- ‘fly’ (< *nis-), qusun ‘water’ (< *usun), tal- ‘to put’ (< *talbi-). Additionally, the language has adopted some Mandarin Chinese loanwords due to the geography of its speakers though its relative composition is not as high as when comparing to other Turkic and Mongolic languages. Some loanwords include biigi ‘quilt’, kui ‘hammer’, feinii ‘cement’ (for standard Mandarin beizi, chui, shuini). The rest of the identified foreign words are comprised from Tibetan and Turkic roots, and the latter of which are mostly from Western Yugur. Some Turkic words include dad ‘rust’, hdei ‘small’, soghong ‘onion’, üü- ‘to praise’. Some Tibetan words, which are mostly from the local Amdo dialect, include shnüge ‘writing brush’, ghayarla- ‘to borrow’, zaghali ‘portrait’.

There are a large number of words whose origin is not yet known or is uncertain such as some basic vocabulary like hani- ‘to go’, lar ‘word’, bala ‘egg’. Many of these are in common with Western Yugur.

Personal Pronouns
The secondary personal pronoun ergen meaning "she" or "he" is also used.

There are also the demonstratives ene ‘this’ and tere ‘that' with their plural forms ün/i.s 'these’ and tün/i.s ‘those’. A list of related derivatives to this include:

ende ‘here’ vs. tende ‘there’; iin ‘such, like this’ vs. tiin ‘such, like that’; ömö (üme) ‘like this’ vs. tömö (tüme) ‘like that’; üngeer ‘along this side’ vs. tüngeer ‘along that side’; ünüin ‘of this side’ vs. türüin ‘of that side’; ünüirüür ‘in this direction’ vs. türüirüür ‘in that direction’.

Imperatives
The most basic imperative form of a verb is when it is used in the second-person form by stating the bare stem of the verb e.g. ci ede ‘eat!’. Additional second-person forms for imperative verbs include the addition of the endings -bar, -war, or -seyaan. There is also a first-person imperative form which acts as an immediate future tense indicating that the speaker will immediately begin the action. It is formed by using the Mongolic voluntative -ya e.g. xaruulj’ög-ya ‘I will give it back’. When it is used along with a plural subject, it indicates a proposal of an action similar to the function of "let us" in English.

There are two other imperative forms, -sAA and -(a)see. -sAA can be used for both the second-person and first-person imperatives while -(a)see can be used for the second-person and third-person imperatives. Finally, there is an adhortative form with the endings -gane and -gani, which can be used to advise in the third-person form. Some examples include tere xariji ere-gani ‘let him come back!’ and mulas naad-gani ‘let the children play’.

Participles
The three shared Mongolic participles are the futuritive, perfective, and habitive participles indicated by the suffixes -Gi, -(G)sAn, and -dAG. The Mongolic imperfective participle -xA is not present in Eastern Yugur.

Possessive Suffixes
The first-person possessive suffixes include -mini and -mani in singular and plural forms respectively. The second-person suffixes include -cini and -tani as singular and plural forms respectively. In the third-person, the suffixes -ini and -ni can be used for either singular or plural subjects.

Numerals
The cardinal numerals of Eastern Yugur are, for the basic digits, as follows: 1 nege ~ nige, 2 ghuur, 3 ghurwan, 4 dörwen, 5 taawin, 6 jirghuun ~ jurghuun, 7 doloon, 8 naiman ~ neiman, 9 hyisin ~ shisin. For the tens: 10 harwan, 20 xorin, 30 qucin, 40 döcin, 50 tawin, 60 jiran, 70 dalan, 80 nayan ~ neyan, 90 yeren. Finally, the powers of ten are expressed as: 100 juun, 1,000 mingghan, 10,000 temen, 100,000 harwan temen, 1,000,000 juun temen ~ sayi, 10,000,000 mingghan temen, 100,000,000 temen temen ~ dongsuur.

The ordinal numerals (first, second, third etc.) are formed by appending the ending of a number with .cAAr e.g. ghuur.caar ‘second’, ghurwan.caar ‘third’, dörwen.ceer ‘fourth’.