Talk:Xiao'erjing

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An entry from Xiao'erjing appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 4 October 2006.

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Contents 1 Origin of term 2 Tone marking 3 Current usage 4 Cyrillicization 5 Unique letters

[edit] Origin of term

Seems like it's phonetic? Not sure on this. The TUFS page notes other ways of referring to Xiao-Er-Jin like 小經, which is more transparent (it contrasts with 大經, i.e. the use of Arabic to write the Arabic language, as in the Koran). Also the term for Xiao-Er-Jin differs regionally. cab 22:07, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Arabic for Arabic is called 本經/本经. --Shibo77 11:10, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tone marking

See this sample (the bilingual one). It's a fully vowelled script (like the modern Uighur orthography, but unlike Arabic, Persian, Urdu, etc.). I'm guessing the straight diagonal strokes above and below the actual letters are tone marks, but I don't know what the tones should be in that dialect (which looks close to Mandarin, but some of the vowels seem weird, along with the tones --- for example, 性 should be the same 4th tone as 分 or 六 in Mandarin, but it has a double tone mark while the two others have only single tone marks.) cab 22:07, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Tones are not marked, those are vowel marks. --Shibo77 11:10, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Current usage

What is the extent of usage of Xiao-Er-Jin among the Hui today? cab 22:07, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Very rare. --Shibo77 11:10, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cyrillicization

What's the cyrillicization scheme called?

The Dungans use the Cyrillic script, so it is called the Dungan Cyrillic alphabet. --Shibo77 11:10, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unique letters

At least some of the letters listed as "unique to Xiao'erjing" are not. 6, for example, is used in Sindhi for [tʰ]. --Ptcamn 04:55, 20 November 2006 (UTC)