The Dagur, Daghur, Dahur, or Daur language, is a Mongolic language, as well as a distinct branch of the Mongolic language family, and is primarily spoken by members of the Dagur ethnic group.

Distribution

Dagur is a Mongolic language consisting of four dialects: *Amur Dagur in the vicinity of

Heihe Heihe (; ; Russian: Хэйхэ) is a prefecture-level city of northern Heilongjiang province, China, located on the Russian border, on the south bank of the Amur (Heilong) River, across the river from Blagoveshchensk. At the 2020 census, 1 ...

(original homeland). About 400 people. *Nonni Dagur on the west side of the

Nonni River The Nen River or Nenjiang (), or Nonni () is a river in Northeast China. The Nen River flows through the northern part of Heilongjiang Province and the northeastern section of Inner Mongolia, some parts of the river forming the border between th ...

from south of

Qiqihar Qiqihar () is the second-largest city in the Heilongjiang province of China, in the west central part of the province. The built-up (or metro) area made up of Longsha, Tiefeng and Jianhua districts had 959,787 inhabitants, while the total populat ...

up to

Morin Dawa Daur Autonomous Banner Morin Dawa Daur Autonomous Banner ( Mongolian: , ''Morin Dabaɣ-a Daɣur öbertegen jasaqu qosiɣu'', Mongolian Cyrillic: Мориндаваа Дагуур өөртөө засах хошуу; Dagur: Morin Dawaa Daor weerie ixkiewu guasei; ) ...

. Speakers of Nonni Dagur are usually grouped into the following 4 dialects: **Morin Daba Dagur, in

(Moli Daba) of Hulun Buir League,

Inner Mongolia Inner Mongolia, officially the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. Its border includes most of the length of China's border with the country of Mongolia. Inner Mongolia also accounts for a ...

**Butha (Buteha) (Northern) Dagur, immediately south of

**Tsitsikar (Southern) Dagur, in Tsitsikar (

) City and surrounding areas **Mergen Dagur or Nenjiang Dagur, in

Nenjiang County Nenjiang City (), formerly Nenjiang County, is a county-level city under the administration of Heihe prefecture-level city in northwestern Heilongjiang province, China. It is located on the river of the same name (Nen River), which also forms part ...

(formerly Mergen County) of

Heilongjiang Province Heilongjiang () formerly romanized as Heilungkiang, is a province in northeast China. The standard one-character abbreviation for the province is (). It was formerly romanized as "Heilungkiang". It is the northernmost and easternmost provinc ...

*Hailar Dagur to the south-east of

Hailar Hailar District, formerly a county-level city, is an urban district that serves as the seat of the prefecture-level city Hulunbuir in northeastern Inner Mongolia, China. Hulunbuir, due to its massive size, is a city in administrative terms onl ...

Ewenki Autonomous Banner Ewenki Autonomous Banner ( Evenki: ; Mongolian: , ''Eveŋki öbertegen jasaqu qosiɣu'', Эвэнк өөртөө засах хошуу; ) is an autonomous banner that lies on the border between northwestern Greater Khingan and Hulun Buir gras ...

*Sinkiang Dagur in

Xinjiang Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwes ...

in the vicinity of

Tacheng TachengThe official spelling according to (), as the official romanized name, also transliterated from Mongolian as Qoqak, is a county-level city (1994 est. pop. 56,400) and the administrative seat of Tacheng Prefecture, in northern Ili Kazakh A ...

There is no written standard in use, although a

Pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese fo ...

-based orthography has been devised; instead the Dagur make use of Mongolian or Chinese, as most speakers know these languages as well. During the time of the

Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...

, Dagur was written with the Manchu alphabet.

Phonology

Dagur phonology is peculiar in that some of its dialects have developed a set of

labialized Labialization is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally restricted to consonants. When vowels involve ...

consonants (e.g. 'flea' vs. 'moon'), while it shares palatalized consonants with most Mongolian dialects that have not been developed in the other Mongolic languages. It also has , which is, however, limited to loan words. Word-final short vowels were lost and historically short vowels in non-initial syllables have lost phoneme status. Dagur is the only Mongolic language to share this development with Mongolian (''i.e.'' Mongolian proper, Oirat, Buryat). Due to the merger of and with and ,

vowel harmony In phonology, vowel harmony is an assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, me ...

was lost. According to Tsumagari (2003), vowel harmony is still a productive synchronic phonotactic aspect of Dagur in which initial syllable long vowels are divided into "masculine" (back), "feminine" (front), and neutral groups. Likewise, suffixal long vowels must agree in harmonic group with the root.

Vowels

Consonants

Grammar

Dagur has a pronominal system that distinguishes between first person plural inclusive and exclusive and, even more archaic, it distinguishes between third person singular and plural . While the phoneme (< ) has been retained, the second person singular pronoun has become nevertheless,Sengge 2004c: 621 resembling a more thorough sound change in

Khorchin Mongolian The Khorchin ( Mongolian ', Chinese 科尔沁 ''Kē'ěrqìn'') dialect is a variety of Mongolian spoken in the east of Inner Mongolia, namely in Hinggan League, in the north, north-east and east of Hinggan and in all but the south of the Tongli ...

. The second person plural is retained as . The

genitive In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can a ...

and

accusative The accusative case ( abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘ ...

have fused in some variants, becoming –''ji'', and the

ablative In grammar, the ablative case (pronounced ; sometimes abbreviated ) is a grammatical case for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives in the grammars of various languages; it is sometimes used to express motion away from something, among other uses. ...

may assume the form of the

instrumental case In grammar, the instrumental case ( abbreviated or ) is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the ''instrument'' or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action. The noun may be either a physical object or a ...

. The old comitative has been lost, while the innovated comitative is the same as in Mongolian. In addition, several other cases have been innovated that are not shared by Mongolian, including a new allative, -''maji''. Dagur has a fairly simple tense- aspect system consisting of the nonpast markers - and (marginally) - and the past forms - and (marginally) and the non-finite imperfective marker --. These may be inflected for person. The attributive

particle In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscule in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass. They vary greatly in size or quantity, from ...

forms are limited to – (< Written Mongolian -γ-a) for

imperfective aspect The imperfective ( abbreviated or more ambiguously ) is a grammatical aspect used to describe ongoing, habitual, repeated, or similar semantic roles, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future. Although many languages have a ge ...

and

future tense In grammar, a future tense ( abbreviated ) is a verb form that generally marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future. An example of a future tense form is the French ''aimera'', meaning ...

, -''sən'' (< -γsan) for

perfective aspect The perfective aspect ( abbreviated ), sometimes called the aoristic aspect, is a grammatical aspect that describes an action viewed as a simple whole; i.e., a unit without interior composition. The perfective aspect is distinguished from the ...

, - (< ''-gči'') for habituality (instead of -daγ which used to fulfil this function) and - for potential and probable actions. It has acquired a highly complex

converb In theoretical linguistics, a converb (abbreviated ) is a nonfinite verb form that serves to express adverbial subordination: notions like 'when', 'because', 'after' and 'while'. Other terms that have been used to refer to converbs include ''adver ...

al system containing several innovations. Notably, -''mar'' which is a participle in Mongolian serves as a converb as well.

Table of personal pronouns

Lexicon

It is estimated that out of Dagur's entire language vocabulary, over half is Mongolic in origin. Additionally, while Dagur has over 50% common Mongolic vocabulary, it has borrowed 5 to 10% of its words from Chinese, as well as 10% of its words from

Manchu The Manchus (; ) are a Tungusic East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized ethnic minority in China and the people from whom Manchuria derives its name. The Later Jin (1616–1636) an ...

, and a small number vocabulary borrowed from Evenki and Russian – leaving about 20% vocabulary that is specific to Dagur only.

Middle Mongol words

Dagur retains quite a few archaic Mongolic words, and although they are not commonly found in the modern Mongolic languages, they do appear in Middle Mongol sources, like the '' Hua-Yi yiyu'' and the ‘

Secret History A secret history (or shadow history) is a revisionist interpretation of either fictional or real history which is claimed to have been deliberately suppressed, forgotten, or ignored by established scholars. "Secret history" is also used to desc ...

’. These words include: * ‘road’ (in Mongol *jam) * ‘summer’ (Mongol *jun) * ‘head’ (Mongol *tologai) * ‘staff’ (Mongol *tayag) * ‘iron’ * ‘spade’ * ‘brain’ * ‘kidney’ * ‘knee’ * ‘salt’ * ‘clothes’ * ‘to say’ (cf. Mongol *kele-)

Numerals

All basic numerals are of Mongolic origin.

Notes

Bibliography

* * Engkebatu (2001): ''Cing ulus-un üy-e-dü dagur kele-ber bicigdegsen jokiyal-ud-un sudulul''. Kökeqota: Öbür monggol-un yeke surgaguli-yin keblel-ün qoriy-a. * * * Sengge (2004): Daγur kele. In: Oyunčimeg 2004: 616-617. * Sengge (2004a): Daγur kelen-ü abiy-a. In: Oyunčimeg 2004: 618. * Sengge (2004b): Daγur kelen-ü üges. In: Oyunčimeg 2004: 619. * Sengge (2004c): Daγur kelen-ü kele ǰüi. In: Oyunčimeg 2004: 618-622. * Tsumagari, Toshiro (2003): Dagur. In: Janhunen, Juha (ed.) (2003): ''The Mongolic languages''. London: Routledge: 129-153. * Yu, Wonsoo, Jae-il Kwon, Moon-Jeong Choi, Yong-kwon Shin, Borjigin Bayarmend, Luvsandorj nBold (2008): ''A study of the Tacheng dialect of the Dagur language''. Seoul: Seoul National University Press.

External links

Unicode Manchu/Sibe/Dagur Fonts and KeyboardsLearning Dagur (in Chinese)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dagur Language Agglutinative languages Mongolic languages Languages of China