Tangwang language


The Tangwang language is a variety of Mandarin Chinese heavily influenced by the Mongolic Santa language. 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", based on the names of the two largest villages where it is spoken.

Speakers

According to Lee-Smith, the Tangwang language is spoken by about 20,000 people living in the north-eastern part of the Dongxiang Autonomous County. These people self-identify as Dongxiang or Hui people. The Tangwang speakers don't speak Dongxiang language.

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.
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.
For example, while the Mandarin plural suffix -men has only very restricted usage, Tangwang uses it, in the form -m, universally, the way Dongxiang would use its plural suffix -la. Mandarin pronoun ni can be used in Tangwang as a possessive suffix.
Unlike Mandarin, but like Dongxiang, Tangwang has grammatical cases as well.
The word order of Tangwang is the same as Dongxiang subject-object-verb form.
Tangwang combines the characteristics of Mandarin Chinese and Dongxiang Mongolian. The hybrid language is a symbol of language blending. According to Lee-Smith, the blending is caused by the Silk Road.