Category Archives: Cyrillic

Dungan-English Dictionary published

Posted on by
Reply

Eastbridge Books, an imprint of Camphor Press, is pleased to announce the publication of its Dungan-English Dictionary, by Olli Salmi.

Dungan-English Dictionary sample page spread

Dungan is interesting for Chinese studies because it has an alphabetic orthography. It is also important because it shows very little influence from the Chinese literary language. It has preserved original features of the local dialects of about 150 years ago. It also has loans from Persian and Arabic, from Turkic languages, and from Russian.

The Dungans are Muslims who fled China for Russian territory in Central Asia after the failure of the Dungan Revolt (1862-1877). Their language, which UNESCO classifies as “definitely endangered,” is related to northwestern Mandarin Chinese. Dungan has two main dialects: the so-called Gansu dialect, which is similar to the Muslim Chinese communal dialects in the southern part of the province of Xinjiang, and the Shaanxi dialect, which has more in common with the dialects of southern Shaanxi around Xi’an. In the Soviet Union an alphabetic orthography and a literary language was developed for the Gansu dialect.

Although Dungan is now spoken primarily outside of China and employs an alphabet rather than Chinese characters, it is not really a peripheral dialect of Chinese. The Dungan Revolt started near Xi’an, Shaanxi, the cradle of the Chinese civilization and a frequent site of the capital of the country. (This is where the terracotta soldiers were buried.) The speakers that gave rise to Gansu Dungan came from a place west of the Shaanxi speakers, but still a totally Chinese-speaking area.

This dictionary is based on words and examples collected from Dungan-language newspapers and books published before the fall of the Soviet Union. Special attention has been paid to not only vocabulary (9,945 headwords) but also grammatical features; the dictionary may even provide material for the study of syntax. An effort has been made to find characters for Dungan words in dialect dictionaries published in China.

This work is available through Camphor Press and Amazon.

Note: I am part of Camphor Press and so stand to make a small amount of money from sales of this book. But that’s not why I’m recommending it to everyone interested in Dungan.

Pinyin font: Lobster

Posted on by
Reply

When I first looked at Pablo Impallari’s font Lobster around the end of 2011, it wasn’t yet capable of handling Pinyin with tone marks. But Lobster has improved since then.

A Pinyin-friendly bold condensed script font that looks good and is free — that’s great news.
lobster_font

It can handle Cyrillic too.
lobster_font_cyrillic

It’s available through Google Fonts.

Unfortunately, its companion, Lobster Two, doesn’t have the same range and so cannot be used for Hanyu Pinyin with tone marks. But I’ll check again in a few years, just in case.

Script differences complicate matters for Uzbeks in Kyrgyzstan

Posted on by
Reply

Ethnic Uzbeks in southern Kyrgyzstan are reportedly suffering from problems with the education system, including that Uzbekistan has switched to the Latin alphabet but Kyrgyzstan has not.

Kyrgyzstan is home to more than 766,000 ethnic Uzbeks out of an overall population of roughly 5 million, according to figures compiled by the State Statistics Committee. Although their numbers are slowly declining, Uzbeks remain the largest minority group in the country. Today, there are just 14 Uzbek language schools in Osh, compared with 21 in 1991….

A shortage of Uzbek-language textbooks and teaching materials constitutes another large obstacle. Many children in Uzbek-language schools must use textbooks that were published in Uzbekistan during the Soviet era. “The situation [became] complicated after Uzbekistan changed from using Cyrillic and started using the Latin [alphabet] in 1993,” explained Erkin Bainzarov, the editor of the Uzbek section of the Osh Shamy (“Evening Osh”) newspaper. “As a result, Kyrgyzstan’s Uzbek schools were forced to stop using textbooks published by Tashkent,” and must rely on antiquated materials. Teachers in Kyrgyzstan have not adapted to the Latin alphabet.

To help, the Kyrgyz-Uzbek University, the only university in the country to provide instruction in Uzbek, established a Textbook Development Center in 1997 with the help of Batyrov’s Friendship of Peoples University in Jalalabad.

“Since Uzbekistan switched to Latin, we started developing our own [Uzbek] textbooks [written in Cyrillic],” said Tursunbai Kamilov, the director of the center. “Since 1997, we have developed a set of seven textbooks for the primary school and 20 textbooks for secondary and high schools.” Yet more is needed. Kamilov says that due to inadequate financing, Uzbek schools only have 34 percent of the textbooks they need.

Some representatives of the Uzbek community say that if current trends persist, southern Kyrgyzstan’s Uzbek-language educational structure could experience a complete collapse. “We have to maintain our schools, and have our children go to Uzbek language schools to preserve our language, culture and identity,” said Khalturaev, the school principal.

source: Kyrgyzstan: Uzbeks in Southern Regions Wrestle with Cultural Dilemma, Eurasianet, October 27, 2009

further reading:

Kyrgyzstan won’t switch to Roman alphabet yet: report

Posted on by
Reply

High-ranking Kyrgyz officials are now reportedly saying that having Kyrgyzstan switch from the Cyrillic to the Roman alphabet would cost more money than the country can afford for the project at present. A later switch has not been ruled out.

sources:

Kyrgyzstan may join trend, adopt the Roman alphabet

Posted on by
2

Asel translates and summarizes remarks by Tashboo Jumagulov (Ташбоо Жумагулов), chairman of Kyrgyzstan’s state language commission, and Kyrgyz legislator Zainidin Kurmanov (Зайнидин Курманов) on the possibility of Kyrgyzstan switching from the Cyrillic to the Roman alphabet, which was recently discussed in the Kyrgyz parliament.

Both Jumagulov and Kurmanov seem to regard the switch as inevitable, though the latter voiced concern that the switch is done carefully and not rushed.

Kyrgyzstan is not to be confused with its neighbor, Kazakhstan, which has been seesawing on its own proposed switch to the Roman alphabet.

sources:

On Kazakhstan’s proposed switch:

more Dungan

Posted on by
Reply

Since earlier this month when I wrote a post on Dungan-language radio, I’ve discovered that Olli Salmi has some great Dungan material on his website, including a paper he wrote and a couple of stories in Dungan, including one he has translated into English.

And for lagniappe he offers “An Unofficial Practical Orthography for the Kiowa Language.”

Dungan-language radio

Posted on by
7

The state radio station of Kyrgyzstan offers a weekly broadcast in Dungan, which is basically a spin-off of northwestern Mandarin with lots of loan words from Persian, Arabic, and Russian. Of particular interest is that the language — which, permit me to note again, is basically Mandarin — is written with an alphabet (at present, one based on the Cyrillic alphabet). Chinese characters are of course not necessary and are not used. For details of the language, script, and people, see Implications of the Soviet Dungan Script for Chinese Language Reform, by Victor H. Mair, and Ethnolinguistic Notes on the Dungan, by Lisa E. Husmann and William S-Y. Wang (available online in Schriftfestschrift: Essays in Honor of John DeFrancis on His Eightieth Birthday, pp. 71-84).

The Dungan radio show is broadcast on Mondays between 6:35 and 7:05 p.m., Taipei time (4:35-5:05 a.m. U.S. central standard time). The show usually starts closer to 6:40 and ends about 7:03.

I made a recording of the latest broadcast (Dec. 31, 2007): Dungan radio broadcast (23 MB mp3).

[Here’s another: Dungan radio broadcast, January 14, 2008 (23 MB mp3).]

I mainly understand words, not entire sentences, though my comprehension improves a little with repeated listenings.

This Kyrgyz radio station (Кыргызское радио) is available through at least three different Internet links:

  1. www.radio.kg/RadioKTR.asx
  2. www.radio.kg/RadioKTR.ram
  3. mms://212.42.102.212:8554/RadioKTR, which is what you get by using the “Kyrgyz radio” link on the Web site for the State Broadcast Company of the Kyrgyz Republic

I have had the best luck with link no. 1.

I made the recording with Total Recorder for Windows and edited it in Audacity.

I’ve heard that Mac users can get good results with Audio Hijack.

Kazakhstan backtracks on move from Cyrillic to Roman alphabet?

Posted on by
8

The president of Kazakhstan has announced that his country won’t “advance the transformation of the Kazakh alphabet from the Cyrillic to Latin one.”

That he did so in a meeting with the president of Turkey is puzzling, as this is not something likely to please the Turks.

On the other hand, not advancing is not necessarily the same thing as cancelling.

Here’s the full release from Kazakhstan’s news agency:

Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev offered not to advance the transformation of the Kazakh alphabet from the Cyrillic to Latin one. The Head of the State announced about it upon the results of his talks with President of Turkey Abdullah Gul.

“For 70 years the Kazakhstanis read and wrote in Cyrillic. More than 100 nationalities live in our state. Thus we need stability and peace. We should be in no hurry in the issue of alphabet transformation”, Mr. Nazarbayev noted.

source: Kazakhstan should be in no hurry in Kazakh alphabet transformation to Latin: Nazarbayev, Kazinform, December 13, 2007

See earlier: Kazakhstan plans switch to Latin alphabet, Pinyin News, November 18, 2007