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Salar is a Turkic language spoken by the Salar people, who mainly live in the provinces of Qinghai and Gansu in China; some also live in Ghulja, Xinjiang. The Salar number about 90,000 people, of whom about 70,000 speak the Salar language; the remaining 20,000 speak Chinese. Amazingly, speakers of Salar and Turkish can generally understand each other to a large degree, even though one ethnic group lives in Central China and the other in Anatolia, thousands of miles away.
The Salar arrived at their current location in the 14th century, having migrated there from the west, according to a Salar legend from Samarkand. Linguistic evidence points to a possible western Turkic, Oghuz origin of the Salar. Contemporary Salar is heavily influenced by contact with Tibetan and Chinese.
[edit] References
- Hahn, R. F. 1988. Notes on the Origin and Development of the Salar Language, Acta Orientalia Hungarica XLII (2-3), 235-237.
- Dwyer, A. 1996. Salar Phonology. Unpublished dissertation University of Washington.
- Dwyer, A. M. 1998. The Turkic strata of Salar: An Oghuz in Chaghatay clothes? Turkic Languages 2, 49-83.
