Dungan alphabets

During its existence, the character set or alphabet of the Dungan language has changed its graphic base several times and has been repeatedly reformed. Currently, the Dungan script functions in Cyrillic. Three stages are distinguished in the history of the Dungan script:

It is used in the territory of the former USSR, in regions where the Dungan language is widespread (mainly Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan).

In China, to write texts in their native Chinese language, the Hui people, whom the Dungan people directly descend from and who are occasionally also referred to as Dungans, used either Chinese characters or a modified Arabic script called Xiao'erjing (literally, "children's script"). In China, the Hui people continue to use Chinese characters to write and speak their dialect of Chinese.

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the first Cyrillic records of Dungan dialects in the Russian Empire were made by V. I. Tsibuzgin, a teacher at the Russian-Dungan school in the village of Karakunuz, and his assistant, Zhebur Matsivang. During the Soviet era (1928), an alphabet clearly based on the Xiao'erjing system was proposed in Tashkent by Dungan students Ya. Shivaza, Yu. Yanshansin, and H. Makeev.

This alphabet included the following letters:

ى ه ۋ و ن م ل ڴ گ ک ق ف غ ﻉ ﻅ ﻁ ڞ ﺽ ﺹ ش س ژ ز ر ﺫ د خ ﺡ چ ﺝ ث ﺕ پ ب ا

Diacritics were used when writing the finals of syllables. This alphabet did not manage to gain popularity, since at that time the question of Latinization of the Dungan script was raised.

In January 1928, at the 2nd Plenum of the All-Union Central Committee of the New Turkic Alphabet in Tashkent, the Dungan Latinized alphabet was adopted. Its authors were Ya. Zhang and a group of Dungan students studying at Tashkent universities. Soviet scientists V. M. Alekseev, A. A. Dragunov and E. D. Polivanov assisted them in developing the alphabet.