Eastern Yugur is the Mongolic language spoken within the

Yugur The Yugurs, Yughurs, Yugu (; Western Yugur: ''Sarïg Yogïr''; Eastern Yugur: ''Šera Yogor''), traditionally known as Yellow Uyghurs, are a Turko- Mongolic ethnic group and one of China's 56 officially recognized ethnic groups, consisting ...

nationality. The other language spoken within the same community is Western Yughur, which is a

Turkic language The Turkic languages are a language family of over 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and Western Asia. The Turkic languag ...

. The terms may also indicate the speakers of these languages, which are both unwritten. Traditionally, both languages are indicated by the term Yellow Uygur, from the autonym of the Yugur. Eastern Yugur speakers are said to have passive bilingualism with

Inner Mongolian 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 ...

, the standard spoken in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. Eastern Yugur is a threatened language with an aging population of fluent speakers.

Language contact Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. When speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for th ...

with neighbouring languages, particularly

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...

, has noticeably affected the language competency of younger speakers. Some younger speakers have also begun to lose their ability to distinguish between different phonetic shades within the language, indicating declining language competency.

Grigory Potanin Grigory Nikolayevich Potanin (alt. Grigorij Potanin) (russian: Григорий Николаевич Потанин; 4 October 1835 – 6 June 1920) was a Russian ethnographer and natural historian. He was an explorer of Inner Asia, and was the ...

recorded a glossary of Salar, Western Yugur, and Eastern Yugur in his 1893 book written in Russian, ''The Tangut-Tibetan Borderlands of China and Central Mongolia''.

Phonology

The phonemes /ç, çʰ, ɕ, ɕʰ, ʂ, ʑ/ appear exclusively in Chinese loanwords. Vowel length is also distributed.

Phonology

References

Further reading