The languages involved include • Chinese •
Hezhou, the language of the
Hui people in
Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture (Gansu) and
Tongren,
Xunhua,
Minhe,
Ledu and
Datong counties of Qinghai. •
Gangou, spoken in Minhe county (Qinghai). •
Tangwang, spoken in northeastern
Dongxiang Autonomous County (Gansu). •
Wutun, spoken in the Upper and Lower Wutun villages, Tongren county (Qinghai). • Tibetic •
Amdo Tibetan, the Tibetic language of Qinghai, varies considerably across the region. • Mongolic •
Monguor (Tu) has two major varieties, often treated as separate languages: Mangghuer in
Minhe Hui and Tu Autonomous County and Mongghul in
Huzhu Tu Autonomous County. •
Eastern Yugur, spoken in
Sunan Yugur Autonomous County (Gansu) •
Bonan (Bao'an) is spoken in
Jishishan Bonan, Dongxiang and Salar Autonomous County (Gansu) and
Tongren County (Qinghai). •
Santa (Dongxiang), centred on
Dongxiang Autonomous County (Gansu) •
Kangjia, spoken in
Jianzha County (Qinghai). • Turkic •
Salar, spoken in Xunhua county (Qinghai) •
Western Yugur, spoken in Sunan county (Gansu) More mainstream varieties of northwestern Mandarin are spoken in the provincial capitals,
Xining and
Lanzhou. All these languages are subject to a superstrate influence from
Standard Mandarin. These languages belong to families with three sharply contrasting typologies: The Mandarin varieties have acquired such features as
spirantized voiceless stops,
SOV word order and
case markers. The
Wutun language of
Tongren county, Qinghai, is a highly divergent Mandarin variety, with phonological and grammatical structures resembling Amdo Tibetan. In some cases, the changes progress through the speaker population in a few decades, so that they can be observed in progress. A common pattern is to add a borrowed structure beside an indigenous structure with the same function, after which the indigenous structure loses its function and eventually disappears, leaving a changed syntactic pattern. For example, the indigenous Bonan comparative structure was N-
si, where the noun N represents the standard being compared against. Bonan added the equivalent Mandarin structure,
bi+N, yielding a composite
bi+N-
si. The original suffix was then lost, leaving a transformed syntactic pattern. == Notes ==