Dungan people

The Dungan people are ethnic Muslims that came from from China who live in regions of the former Soviet Union and Xinjiang. Their ancestors are the Hui people in China. Russians and Turkic-speaking peoples call them Dungan, but the Dungan call themselves Hui because that is what their ancestors called themselves.

The Dungan language came from Mandarin Chinese, and it is most like the dialects in Gansu and Shaanxi provinces in China. The Dungan call their language the Hui language. Like Chinese, it is a tonal language. However, it is different from Chinese because it uses some words that are no longer used in Chinese dialects today. There are also many Arabic and Persian loanwords. Unlike Chinese, it is written using Cyrillic instead of Chinese characters.