Salar

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The Salar people (Chinese: 撒拉族, Pinyin: Sālāzú) are one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China. They numbered 104,503 people in the last census of 2000 and live mostly in Qinghai (in Xunhua Salar Autonomous County 循化撒拉族自治縣 and Hualong Autonomous County of the Hui Nationality 化隆回族自治縣), in Gansu (in Jishishan Autonomous County of the Bonan, Dongxiang and Salar Nationalities 積石山保安族東鄉族撒拉族自治縣) and in Xinjiang (in the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture 伊犁哈薩克自治州).

Their ancestors were migrating Oghuz Turks who intermarried with the Tibetans, Han Chinese, and Hui. They are a patriarchal agricultural society and Muslims.

Language

The Salar language has two large dialect groups. The divergence is due to the fact that one branch was influenced by the Tibetan and Chinese languages, and the other branch by the Uyghur and Kazakh languages. Only about one third of Salar speak their own language. In addition to Chinese, many Salar also speak Tibetan. Salar is not a written language. There are reported similarities with Turkmen. Anthropologically the Salar are of the Mongoloid Central Asian race but have mixed with Tibetans,Han and Mongols.

References

Tenišev, E.R: Stroj salarskogo âzyka (The structure of the Salar language). Moscow, Nauka 1976).
Lin Lianyun (林莲云): 汉撒拉、撒拉汉词汇 (Chinese-Salar Salar-Chinese lexicon. Chengdu, People's Press of Sichuan. 1992.

External links

[The Salar ethnic minority] (Chinese government site)
Arienne M. Dwyer: [Salar Grammatical Sketch] (PDF)
[Salar language materials], including pronunciation and sentence examples

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