What is the Dungan language?
Q: What is the Dungan language?
A: The Dungan language is the native language of the Dungan people.
Q: Who are the Dungan people?
A: The Dungan people are an ethnic group living in regions of the former Soviet Union and Xinjiang who are descendants of Hui people.
Q: What do the Dungan call their language?
A: The Dungan call their own language the Hui language.
Q: What is the Dungan language based on?
A: The Dungan language is a daughter language of Mandarin Chinese based on Gansu and Shaanxi dialects.
Q: Can speakers of both Gansu and Shaanxi dialects understand each other in Dungan?
A: Yes, speakers of both Gansu and Shaanxi dialects can largely understand each other in Dungan. This is called mutual intelligibility.
Q: Does Dungan have any similarities with Chinese?
A: Yes, like Chinese, Dungan is both tonal and analytic.
Q: How does the writing system of Dungan differ from that of Chinese?
A: Dungan is written in Cyrillic instead of Chinese characters. Additionally, there are differences in vocabulary, with Dungan having more Arabic and Persian loanwords and several terms no longer used in Standard Chinese.
