Salar language

Salar
Salırça سالارچا
Native to	China
Region	Qinghai, Gansu
Native speakers	70,000 (2002)
Language family	Turkic Oghuz Salar
Writing system	Arabic, Chinese, Pinyin-based Latin, and a separate Latin alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3	slr
Glottolog	sala1264

Salar is a Turkic language spoken by the Salar people, who mainly live in the provinces of Qinghai and Gansu in China; some also live in Yining, Xinjiang. The Salar number about 105,000 people, about 60,000 (2002) speak the Salar language; under 20,000 monolinguals.

The Salar arrived at their current location in the 14th century, having migrated there from the west, according to a Salar legend from Samarkand. Linguistic evidence points to a possible western Turkic, Oghuz origin of the Salar. Contemporary Salar is heavily influenced by contact with Amdo Tibetan and Chinese.

Status

The Salar language is the official language in all Salar autonomous areas. Such autonomous areas are the Xunhua Salar Autonomous County and the Jishishan Bonan, Dongxiang and Salar Autonomous County.

Phonology

Salar phonology has been influenced by Tibetan and Chinese. In addition, /k, q/ and /g, ɢ/ have become separate phonemes due to loanwords, as it has in other Turkic languages.

Consonants

	Labial		Dental		Retroflex		Alveolopalatal		Velar		Uvular		Glottal
Plosive	p	b	t	d					k	ɡ	q	ɢ
Affricate					t͡ʂ	d͡ʐ	t͡ɕ	d͡ʑ
Fricative	f	(v)	s	z	ʂ		ɕ		x		ʁ		h
Nasal	m		n
Approximant	w		l r				j

Salar vowels are as in Turkish, with the back vowels a, ɨ, o u and the corresponding front vowels e, i, ø, y.

Classification

Although Salar is an Oghuz language, it also received influence from other non-Oghuz Turkic languages like Chagatai, northwestern Turkic and southeastern Turkic.

Chinese and Tibetan Influence

In Amdo, Salar language has heavy Chinese and Tibetan influence. Although of Turkic origin, major linguistic structures have been absorbed from Chinese. Around 20% of the vocabulary is of Chinese origin, and 10% is also of Tibetan origin. Yet the official Communist Chinese government policy deliberately covers up these influences in academic and linguistics studies, trying to emphasize the Turkic element and completely ignoring the Chinese in the Salar language. The Salar use the Chinese writing system since they do not have their own. The Salar language has taken loans and influence from neighboring varieties of Chinese. It is neighboring variants of Chinese which have loaned words to the Salar language.

In Qinghai, many Salar men speak both the Qinghai dialect of Chinese and Salar. Rural Salars can speak Salar fluently while urban Salars often assimilate into the Chinese speaking Hui population.

Dialects

The Qing deported some Salar who belonged to the Jahriyya Sufi order to the Ili (Yining) valley which is in modern-day Xinjiang. Today, a community of a few thousand Salars speaking a distinct dialect of Salar still live in Yining. Salar migrants from Amdo (Qinghai) came to settle the region as religious exiles, migrants, and as soldiers enlisted in the Chinese army to fight rebels in Ili, often following the Hui. The distinctive dialect of the Ili Salar differs from the other Salar dialects because the neighboring Kazakh and Uyghur languages in Ili influenced it. The Ili Salar population numbers around 4,000 people. There have been instances of misunderstanding between speakers of Ili Salar and Qinghai Salar due to the divergence of the dialects. The differences between the two dialect result in a "clear isogloss".

Grammar

For the verb "to do" Salar uses "ät".

The participle miš is used by Salar.

In Ili Salar, the i and y high front vowels, when placed after an initial glides are spirantized with j transforming into ʝ. Qinghai and Ili Salar have mostly the same consonantal development.

Writing system

Salars use Chinese for written purposes while using Salar language for spoken purposes.

Salar used to be written in Arabic script; some still use it at present. There are calls to standardize the Arabic-based script for Salar. Some Salar call for a Latin script, and some Salar elders who dislike the Latin script desire an Arabic script. This lack of an official script has led the Salar to use the Chinese writing system. China offered the Salar an official writing system but it was rejected. The Salar favor the continued use of Chinese characters which shows their "strong attachment to being citizens of the Chinese state".

Despite there being an unofficial Latin-script alphabet based on the orthography for Turkic languages for the Salar, the Latin script is unpopular among the Salar and has failed to catch on. Arabic script is much more popular among the Salar. The Arabic script has historical precedent among the Salar; centuries-old documents in the Salar language were written in the Arabic script when discovered.

Grigory Potanin recorded a glossary of Salar, Western Yugur language, and Eastern Yugur language in his 1893 Russian language book The Tangut-Tibetan Borderlands of China and Central Mongolia with assistance from Vasily Radlov.

William Woodville Rockhill wrote a glossary of Salar in his 1894 book Diary of a Journey through Mongolia and Tibet in 1891 and 1892.

Pinyin based Latin alphabet

A romanization of the Mengda dialect of Salar based on pinyin has been developed, created by a Salar, Ma Quanlin, who lives in Xunhua. Like Pinyin, which is used to romanize Mandarin Chinese, this salar romanization is divided into categories of consonants and vowels. Letters that occur both in pinyin and romanization of Mengda Salar share the same sound values.

consonants

Pinyin	IPA	English approximation	Explanation
b	[p]	spit	unaspirated p, as in spit
p	[pʰ]	pay	strongly aspirated p, as in pit
m	[m]	may	as in English mummy
f	[f]	fair	as in English fun
d	[t]	stop	unaspirated t, as in stop
t	[tʰ]	take	strongly aspirated t, as in top
n	[n]	nay	as in English nit
l	[l]	lay	as in English love
l	/ð/	those	as in English the
g	[k]	skill	unaspirated k, as in skill
g̲	/ɣ/	no equivalent in English	"thicker and deeper" version of g
k	[kʰ]	kay	strongly aspirated k, as in kill
h	[x]	loch	roughly like the Scots ch. English h as in hay or hot is an acceptable approximation.
j	[tɕ]	hatch	No equivalent in English. Like q, but unaspirated. Not the s in Asia, despite the common English pronunciation of "Beijing".
q	[tɕʰ]	cheek	No equivalent in English. Like cheek, with the lips spread wide with ee. Curl the tip of the tongue downwards to stick it at the back of the teeth and strongly aspirate.
x	[ɕ]	she	No equivalent in English. Like she, with the lips spread and the tip of your tongue curled downwards and stuck to the back of teeth when you say ee.
zh	[tʂ]	junk	Rather like ch (a sound between choke, joke, true, and drew, tongue tip curled more upwards). Voiced in a toneless syllable.
ch	[tʂʰ]	church	as in chin, but with the tongue curled upwards; very similar to nurture in American English, but strongly aspirated.
sh	[ʂ]	shirt	as in shoe, but with the tongue curled upwards; very similar to marsh in American English
r	[ʐ], [ɻ]	ray	Similar to the English z in azure and r in reduce, but with the tongue curled upwards, like a cross between English "r" and French "j". In Cyrillised Chinese the sound is rendered with the letter "ж".
z	[ts]	reads	unaspirated c, similar to something between suds and cats; as in suds in a toneless syllable
c	[tsʰ]	hats	like the English ts in cats, but strongly aspirated, very similar to the Czech and Polish c.
s	[s]	say	as in sun
y	[j], [ɥ]	yea	as in yes. Before a u, pronounce it with rounded lips.*
w	[w]	way	as in water.*
v	[v]	vitamin	as in very.

vowels

Pinyin	IPA	Form with zero initial	Explanation
a	[ɑ]	a	as in "father"
o	[ɔ]	(n/a)	Approximately as in "office" in British accent; the lips are much more rounded.
e	[ɯ̯ʌ], [ə]	e	a diphthong consisting first of a back, unrounded semivowel (which can be formed by first pronouncing "w" and then spreading the lips without changing the position of the tongue) followed by a vowel similar to English "duh". Many unstressed syllables in Chinese use the schwa [ə] (idea), and this is also written as e.
i	[i]	yi	like English bee.
u	[u]	wu	like English "oo"
ai	[aɪ̯]	ai	like English "eye", but a bit lighter
ei	[eɪ̯]	ei	as in "hey"
ui	[u̯eɪ̯]	wei	as u + ei;
ao	[ɑʊ̯]	ao	approximately as in "cow"; the a is much more audible than the o
iu	[i̯ɤʊ̯]	you	as i + ou
ie	[i̯ɛ]	ye	as i + ê; but is very short; e (pronounced like ê) is pronounced longer and carries the main stress (similar to the initial sound ye in yet)
an	[an]	an	as in "ban" in British English (a more open fronted a)
en	[ən]	en	as in "taken"
in	[in]	yin	as i + n
un	[yn]	yun	as ü + n;
ang	[ɑŋ]	ang	as in German Angst (starts with the vowel sound in father and ends in the velar nasal; like song in some dialects of American English)
eng	[əŋ]	eng	like e in en above but with ng added to it at the back
ing	[iŋ]	ying	as i + ng
ong	[ʊŋ], [u̯əŋ]	weng	starts with the vowel sound in book and ends with the velar nasal sound in sing; as u + eng in zero initial.

Sources

• Hahn, R. F. 1988. Notes on the Origin and Development of the Salar Language, Acta Orientalia Hungarica XLII (2–3), 235–237.
• Dwyer, A. 1996. Salar Phonology. Unpublished dissertation University of Washington.
• Dwyer, A. M. 1998. The Turkic strata of Salar: An Oghuz in Chaghatay clothes? Turkic Languages 2, 49–83.

External links

• Abstract of Article on Salar, includes some phrases (The Salar is written in Chinese Pinyin, not the Salar alphabet)
• REMARKS ON THE SALAR LANGUAGE
• Salar grammatical sketch
• Salar Language Materials