Eastern Yugur language

Eastern Yugur
Native to	China
Region	Gansu
Ethnicity	6,000 Yugur (2000)[1]
Native speakers	4,000 (2007)[1]
Language family	Mongolic Southern Mongolic Eastern Yugur
Language codes
ISO 639-3	yuy
Glottolog	east2337
ELP	East Yugur

Eastern Yugur is a Mongolic language spoken within the Yugur nationality. The other language spoken within the same community is Western Yughur, which is a Turkic language. The terms may also indicate the speakers of these languages, which are both unwritten.^[2] 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 Inner Mongolian, the standard spoken in China.^[3]

Eastern Yugur is a threatened language with an aging population of fluent speakers.^[4][5] Language contact with neighbouring languages, particularly Chinese, has noticeably affected the language competency of younger speakers.^[5] Some younger speakers have also begun to lose their ability to distinguish between different phonetic shades within the language, indicating declining language competency.^[6]

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.^{[7][8][9][10][11][12]}

Phonology

Consonants

		Bilabial	Alveolar		Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
			plain	lateral
Stop	voiceless	p	t			k	q
	aspirated	pʰ	tʰ			kʰ	qʰ
Affricate	voiceless		t͡s		t͡ʃ
	aspirated		t͡sʰ		t͡ʃʰ
Fricative	voiceless		s	ɬ	ʃ		χ	h
	voiced	β				ɣ	ʁ
Nasal	voiced	m	n			ŋ
	voiceless		n̥
Trill			r
Approximant				l	j

The phonemes /ç, çʰ, ɕ, ɕʰ, ʂ, ʑ/ appear exclusively in Chinese loanwords.^[2]

Vowels^[13]

	Front		Central	Back
High	i	y	ʉ	u
Mid	e	ø	ə	o ɔ
Low				ɑ

Vowel length is also distributed.

References

1. Eastern Yugur at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. Nugteren, Hans; Roos, Marti (1996). "Common Vocabulary of the Western and Eastern Yugur Languages: The Turkic and Mongolic Loanwords". Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae. 49 (1/2): 25–91. JSTOR 43391252.
3. Wurm, Stephen Adolphe; Mühlhäusler, Peter; Tyron, Darrell T., eds. (1996). Atlas of Languages of Intercultural Communication in the Pacific, Asia, and the Americas, Volume 2, Part 1. Walter de Gruyter. p. 822. ISBN 978-3-11-013417-9.
4. "East Yugur". Glottolog. Retrieved 2021-02-19.
5. Wu, Han; Jin, Yasheng (2017). "Phonetic Changes of Eastern Yugur Language: Case Study of Vowel /ɐ/". Proceedings of the 2016 2nd International Conference on Economics, Management Engineering and Education Technology (ICEMEET 2016). Atlantis Press. pp. 745–749. doi:10.2991/icemeet-16.2017.155. ISBN 978-94-6252-288-6.
6. Wu, Han; Yu, Hongzhi (2017). "Features and Changes of Vowels of Eastern Yugur Language". Proceedings of the 2017 International Conference on Innovations in Economic Management and Social Science (IEMSS 2017). Atlantis Press. pp. 681–685. doi:10.2991/iemss-17.2017.136. ISBN 978-94-6252-314-2.
7. Poppe, Nicholas (1953). "Remarks on The Salar Language". Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. 16 (3/4): 438–477. doi:10.2307/2718250. JSTOR 2718250.
8. Roos, Martina Erica (2000). The Western Yugur (Yellow Uygur) Language: Grammar, Texts, Vocabulary (PDF) (Doctoral thesis). Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04.
9. "Yugurology". The Western Yugur Steppe. Archived from the original on October 5, 2003.
10. Potanin, Grigory Nikolayevich (Григорий Николаевич Потанин) (1893). Tangutsko-Tibetskaya okraina Kitaya i Tsentralnaya Mongoliya: puteshestvie G.N. Potanina 1884–1886 Тангутско-Тибетская окраина Китая и Центральная Монголія: путешествіе Г.Н. Потанина 1884–1886 (in Russian). Typ. A. S. Suvoryna.
11. Potanin, Grigory Nikolayevich (Григорий Николаевич Потанин) (1893). Tangutsko-Tibetskaya okraina Kitaya i Tsentralnaya Mongoliya: puteshestvie G.N. Potanina 1884–1886 Тангутско-Тибетская окраина Китая и Центральная Монголія: путешествіе Г.Н. Потанина 1884–1886 (in Russian). Vol. 2. Typ. A. S. Suvoryna.
12. Potanin, Grigory Nikolayevich (Григорий Николаевич Потанин) (1893). Tangutsko-Tibetskaya okraina Kitaya i Tsentralnaya Mongoliya: puteshestvie G.N. Potanina 1884–1886 Тангутско-Тибетская окраина Китая и Центральная Монголія: путешествіе Г.Н. Потанина 1884–1886 (in Russian). Typ. A. S. Suvoryna.
13. Chuluu (1994)

Further reading

• 保朝鲁; 贾拉森 (1991). Dōngbù yùgù yǔ hé ménggǔ yǔ 东部裕固语和蒙古语 [Eastern Yugur and Mongolian] (in Chinese). Huhehaote: Neimenggu renmin chubanshe. ISBN 978-7-204-01401-9. OCLC 299469024.
• Chuluu, Üjiyediin (Chaolu Wu) (1994). Introduction, Grammar and Sample Sentences for Jegün Yogur (PDF). Sino-Platonic Papers, No. 54. Philadelphia, PA: Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania. OCLC 32579233.
• Stuart, Kevin C., ed. (1996). Blue Cloth and Pearl Deer: Yogur Folklore (PDF). Sino-Platonic Papers, No. 73. Translated by Zhang, Juan. Philadelphia, PA: Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania. OCLC 41180478.