Monguor language

The Monguor language is a Mongolic language of its Shirongolic branch and is part of the Gansu–Qinghai sprachbund. There are several dialects, mostly spoken by the Monguor people. A writing system was devised for Huzhu Monguor in the late 20th century but has been little used.
A division into two languages, namely Mongghul in Huzhu Tu Autonomous County and Mangghuer in Minhe Hui and Tu Autonomous County, is considered necessary by some linguists. While Mongghul was under strong influence from Amdo Tibetan, the same holds for Mangghuer and Sinitic languages, and local varieties of Chinese such as the Gangou language were in turn influenced by Monguor.

Phonology

Vowels

Vowel sounds may also be nasalized when preceding a nasal consonant, in different environments.
Vowels may also undergo a devoicing process in certain phonetic environments.

Phoneme/Sound	Allophones	Notes
		in stressed syllables
		when following alveolar sibilants or affricates
		when following a retroflex consonant
		in stressed syllables without onset clusters or coda consonants
		in a syllable with a palatal onset or palatal coda
		in a syllable with a nasal coda consonant
		in a syllable closed by a velar nasal coda
		before a syllable-final
		when a syllable is closed by an alveolar nasal
		when following a palatal onset consonant, and preceding an alveolar nasal
		may be closer in different environments
		when in unstressed syllables
		when following palatal consonants

Consonants

can also be heard as allophones or, occurring in free variation.
can be heard as a voiced fricative within the onset of a stressed syllable, or of a word-initial syllable. It can also be heard as a flap sound intervocalically in the onset of an unstressed syllable. In a syllable-coda position, it is heard as a rhotic vowel sound.
can have a spirantized allophone of strongly in stressed syllables.
Writing system

Cyrillic alphabet

In 1958, a Cyrillic-based alphabet was developed for Monguor, but its practical use did not begin for political reasons.
The Cyrillic alphabet for Monguor had the following letters:

Latin alphabet

From the 1970s to the 1980s, the current Latin alphabet for Monguor based on Pinyin was developed. It consists of 31 letters.
The following list shows the letters of the Monguor Latin alphabet along with their pronunciation in the IPA:

A a
B b
C c
D d
E e
F f
G g
H h
I i
J j
K k
L l
M m
N n
O o
P p
Q q
R r
S s
T t
U u
W w
X x
Y y
Z z
Zh zh
Ch ch
Sh sh
Ng ng
Gh gh
Kh kh

The letter V is not used. Long vowels are written with double vowel letters.

Numerals

Mongolian numerals such as the following are only in use in the Mongghul dialect, while Mangghuer speakers have switched to counting in Chinese. Note that while the Mongolian script has only arban for 'ten', Middle Mongolian *harpa/n including *h can be reconstructed from the scripts.

Numeral	Classical Mongolian	Monguor
1	nigen	nige
2	qoyar	ghoori
3	ghurban	ghuran
4	dörben	deeran
5	tabun	tawun
6	jirghughan	jirighun
7	dologhan	duluun
8	naiman	niiman
9	yisün	shdzin
10	arban	haran