Dungans at Penn
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We have mentioned the Dungan people and their unique language many times on Language Log. How did it happen that we at Penn have a connection with the Dungans, a small group (less than a hundred thousand) of Sinitic speakers who have lived in the center of Asia (Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan) since the latter part of the 19th century? They fled there from northwest China, many of them dying along the way, after revolting against the Manchu Qing government.
When, in the 70s, I found out that the Dungans had been illiterate in China, but, with the help of the Russians, they gained literacy in Cyrillic, I became very interested in them because it proved something I had been saying since the late 60s when I started learning Mandarin, namely, you don't need sinographs to write Sinitic languages. Consequently, I made a special trip to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan to study how their written language worked. I discovered that, not only did it enable the Dungans to swiftly attain literacy in their own language, it also enabled them effortlessly to borrow Persian, Arabic, and Russian words into Dungan, and through these languages, also French, German, and other languages. Oh, yes, they acquired Turkic terms too.
I wrote articles and blogs about the Dungans and their language, and gave talks about them at many venues. I also brought the first (so far as I know) Dungan speaker to America. His name was Sushanlo, a famous poet. I was intrigued by his name, because it seemed to mask three Sinitic syllables. After lengthy discussions with him, we finally figured out that it was equal to Shísānlǎo 十三老 ("Old Thirteen").
Sushanlo was accompanied by the distinguished Russian folklorist and Sinologist, Boris Riftin, who spoke Mandarin with a strong Dungan accent, because he had spent a considerable amount of time among the Dungans.
For those of you who have been following the thread of posts and comments about "How to transcribe the name of the ruler of the PRC" (11/4/25), you will remember that one of the respondents was a Dungan, and she had transcribed "Xi Jinping" in Cyrillic Dungan, viz., Си Дзиньпин. That was Lola Iusupova, where Russian specialists can probably recognize her surname as a Slavic patronymic. Thereby hangs a tale.
Several months ago, near the beginning of the semester, I heard a knock on my door. When I opened the door, a tall, graceful woman introduced herself, saying, "Hello, I am Lola Iusupova, a Dungan Fulbright scholar who will be here at Penn for the next year."
I almost fainted.
What fate brought her to Penn?
I think she probably similarly must have fainted when she realized that VHM was here.
As we say in Chinese when such miraculous things happen, "Yǒuyuán 有緣" ("fated"). Lola Iusupova didn't know I was here when she was assigned by Fulbright to come to Penn, and I didn't know anything about her coming until she knocked on my door.
Fulbright must have done their homework.
Selected readings
- "Dungan, a Sinitic language of Central Asia written in the Cyrillic Alphabet" (6/14/21)
- "Dungan: a Sinitic language written with the Cyrillic alphabet" (4/20/13)
- "The look, feel, and sound of Dungan language" (10/15/20)
- "'Jesus' in Dungan" (7/16/14)
- "Dungan-English dictionary" (10/26/18) — online here
- "Pinyin in practice" (10/13/11), esp. these two comments (here and here).
- "Writing Sinitic languages with phonetic scripts" (5/20/16)
- "Sinitic languages without the Sinographic script" (3/5/19)
- "Dungan radio broadcasts from 2018-2021" (6/15/25)
For those of you who are interested and would like to hear what it sounds like in real life — spoken and sung by male and female voices — we are fortunate to have a series of ten radio broadcast recordings (here).
Note the natural, easy, undistorted insertion of non-Sinitic borrowings, e.g., "Salam alaikum" (Arabic as-salāmu ʿalaykum السَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ ["Peace be upon you"]). That would not be possible in sinographic transcription of northwest Sinitic speech. This and other aspects and implications of alphabetic Dungan have been extensively discussed on LL.
After I brought Dungan speakers to America and wrote about them in Sino-Platonic Papers (no. 18, May 1990) and elsewhere four decades ago, they caught the attention of Berkeley professor William S-Y. Wang, to the extent that he organized a research trip to Kazakhstan / Kyrgyzstan where the Dungans live. He was hoping to have one of his graduate students write her Ph.D. dissertation on Dungan. Unfortunately, he had to give up on that plan because he said that neither he nor his graduate student could understand Dungan speech.
- Rostislav Berezkin, "Academician Boris L’vovich Riftin (1932–2012): The Extraordinary Life of a Brilliant Scholar", CHINOPERL Papers, 31 (2012), 259-272.
- Victor H. Mair, "Implications of the Soviet Dungan Script for Chinese Language Reform", Sino-Platonic Papers, 18 (May, 1990) (free pdf).
- "Chinese-Russian Muslims: the Dungan people", StephenJones.blog (4/13/20) — featuring the work of Svetlana Rimsky-Korsakoff Dyer, great-granddaughter of the composer
- Wikipedia — people, language
- Omniglot
Arthur Waldron said,
November 7, 2025 @ 7:58 am
Excellent
Julia said,
November 7, 2025 @ 10:51 am
So cool
David Marjanović said,
November 7, 2025 @ 3:55 pm
I bet the Persian, Arabic and Turkic words, complete with [r] as a loanword phoneme and a bunch of consonant clusters, came in as soon as the Dungans converted to Islam, long before Cyrillic (or I suppose any) literacy. But, yes, of course Cyrillic lets you write such things and sinographs don't.
The suffix, yes; the patronym itself is, unsurprisingly, Islamic (Arabic Yusuf > Turkic Yusup).
Rodger C said,
November 8, 2025 @ 10:29 am
"Joseph" names ending in /p/ can also be older Slavic loans. Ossip.
cliff arroyo said,
November 10, 2025 @ 3:53 am
"The suffix, yes; the patronym itself is, unsurprisingly, Islamic"
Iusupova just looks like a russophone last name. The patronymic (from her father's first name) would end in -ovna or -evna.
Rodger C said,
November 10, 2025 @ 10:18 am
Right, like the fellow usually called Prince Youssoupoff.
Philip Taylor said,
November 14, 2025 @ 5:32 am
This thread is (as of this instant) the last to appear on the front page of Language Log, so before it disappears out of sight completely I thought that I should report that I cannot read the thread title without mis-interpreting it as "Dungeons at Penn" (and not the "and Dragons" variety, either).
Bakyt said,
November 22, 2025 @ 12:30 pm
Mr. Victor Mair,
Let me express my gratitude for your scholarly work in studying the Dungan people and their unique language. As a representative of the Kyrgyz people, I would like to share some commentary regarding the meaning of the name Lola and the surname Yusupova, which she inherited from her father, Ilyas Ismailovich Yusupov.
The name "Lola" is common in Eastern countries and is of Persian origin, meaning “tulip” flower. The name also carries other interpretations in different languages.
The name Yusup, as noted above, is derived from the name Yusuf (the Prophet Joseph). The influence of religion led to the incorporation of many Arabic words and Muslim names into the Dungan language.
Lola Yusupova's father, Ilyas Ismailovich Yusupov (born June 11, 1930), was the author of over 100 research papers, 15 monographs, brochures, textbooks, dictionaries, and a collection of Dungan folk tales, among other works. His most renowned publications include:
– The Participation of the Dungans in the Establishment of Soviet Power in Semirechye;
– The Cooperation among the Dungans of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan;
– The Participation of the Dungans in the October Revolution and the Civil War;
– The Masanchi Collective Farm Village;
– The Soviet Dungans during the Great Patriotic War;
– The collective monograph "Essays on the History of the Soviet Dungans," and others.
The central idea permeating all works by Ilyas Ismailovich Yusupov was to convey to the world that the Dungans are not a community dependent on the nationalities among whom they reside. Rather, they are a fully-fledged people with their own language, culture, traditions, and values, who make significant contributions to the states they inhabit.
As experience shows, over time, an increasing number of Dungans are prioritizing education, with Lola herself being a prime example. Challenges in securing positions within the civil service, where they could influence national policy, do exist and are likely to persist.
However, by focusing on education, the quality of professional expertise, and honest labor, the Dungans can, in the long term, attain significant influence in the countries they call home.
Based on the above, Ilyas Ismailovich Yusupov, as a representative of the Dungan people, very carefully and diplomatically uses his scholarly work to educate others about the identity of the Dungans and the potential role they can play among the world's peoples.
With gratitude and respect,
Victor Mair said,
November 22, 2025 @ 9:07 pm
@Philip Taylor
I don't understand at all what you're saying int the first half of your comment, and can barely comprehend what your getting at in the second half.
Philip Taylor said,
November 23, 2025 @ 5:02 am
Victor —
When I access Language Log, I do so using the Firefox web browser, which presents the content as a series of web pages. The first ends with the text « Previous Entries Next Page » and later pages end with the text "« Previous Page — « Previous Entries Next Entries » — Next Page ». At the time that I made my comment, the article/thread entitled "Dungans at Penn" appeared at the bottom of the first page, just above the words « Previous Entries Next Page ». More articles/threads having now been posted, so of course it no longer does. End of explanation of "the first half of [my] comment".
As to "what [I am] getting at in the second half", it simply that my mind is far more accustomed to encountering the word "dungeon" than it is to encountering the word "Dungan", so whenever I read (past tense) the title of the thread, my mind told me that it was about dungeons, not Dungans. And the rider about the dragons was to indicate that my mind was telling me that the thread would be about real dungeons (at Penn), not fantasy dungeons as in the röle-playing game "dungeons and dragons".
Philip Taylor said,
November 23, 2025 @ 5:06 am
None of which is intended to shew any disrespect to Lola Yusupova or her father Ilyas Ismailovich Yusupov. I had (unfortunately) not read the most recent comment by Bakyt before posting my reply to Victor, so I apologise most sincerely for any perceived disrespect.
Victor Mair said,
November 23, 2025 @ 7:52 am
@Philip
My Mozilla Thunderbird which I otherwise have adored for more than a decade, has lately — after repeated, forced upgrades — been adding unwanted bells and whistles that give me similar problems of grouping messages as your Mozilla Firefox is giving you. Thunderbird was driving me nuts for the last few weeks because it was grouping messages inside of other messages, causing me to lose track of the ones that were hidden inside the ones at the top of the group.
In desperation, I sought the help of the IT guys in my building. They figured out this protocol for unravelling / revealing the lost / hidden messages:
1. View
2. Sort by
3. Unthreaded
That seems to resolve the problem, until I shut down down or restart my computer, because the next time I turn it on, the messages have been rethreaded, which appears to be the default mode for the new, upgraded Thunderbird.
Woe are us!
As for your confusion about "Dungan" and "dungeon", I understand that, but Dungan has been a major theme at Language Log over the decades, so I thought it would be familiar to most readers.here. The reason I have been so transfixed by Dungan for half a century, even making a couple of special research trips to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan is because they are living proof that Chinese characters are not necessary for learning to read and write Sinitic languages, something I had believed from the very moment I began to learn them, and shunned the characters insofar as learning the spoken languages was concerned.
Dungan is a landmark in the history of writing.
Philip Taylor said,
November 23, 2025 @ 8:23 am
Ah, Thunderbird — my copy (and all of the hotel copies) are frozen at Version 102.15.1 (64-bit). All thereafter were/are (in my opinion) a disaster. I routinely turn off threading, and hide the "thread" column , but there are circumstances in which it once again manifests itself, at which point I have to re-enable the "thread" column and disable it for that particular view. Oh, and I routinely disable the "Correspondents" column and enable in its place either "From" or "Recipient" as appropriate.
Fully understood regarding Dungan having been a major theme at Language Log over the decades, but for some unknown reason my mind still mis-identifies the word when I read it. I shall try to train it to do otherwise …
John Rosslyn Clark said,
November 23, 2025 @ 10:46 pm
We at IUCA (iuca.kg) would be happy to cooperate with Dungan-oriented projects you and your colleagues might have. Please be in touch.