Xiao'erjing
Writing system for Chinese in the Perso-Arabic script / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Xiao'erjing (lit. 'children's script'), often shortened to Xiaojing (lit. 'minor script', the 'original script'[lower-alpha 1] being the Perso-Arabic script), is the practice of writing Sinitic languages—such as the Lanyin Mandarin, Zhongyuan Mandarin and Northeastern Mandarin dialects—or the Dungan language using the Perso-Arabic script.[2][3][4][5] It is used on occasion by many ethnic minorities who adhere to Islam in China—mostly the Hui, but also the Dongxiang and the Salar—and formerly by their Dungan descendants in Central Asia. Orthography reforms introduced the Latin script and later the Cyrillic script to the Dungan language, which continue to be used today.
Xiao'erjing | |||||||||||||||
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Traditional Chinese | 小兒經 | ||||||||||||||
Simplified Chinese | 小儿经 | ||||||||||||||
Xiao'erjing | [1] ثِیَوْعَرݣٍْ | ||||||||||||||
Literal meaning | children's script | ||||||||||||||
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Xiaojing | |||||||||||||||
Traditional Chinese | 小經 | ||||||||||||||
Simplified Chinese | 小经 | ||||||||||||||
Literal meaning | minor script | ||||||||||||||
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Xiaojing | |||||||||||||||
Traditional Chinese | 消經 | ||||||||||||||
Simplified Chinese | 消经 | ||||||||||||||
Xiao'erjing | [1] ثِیَوْݣٍْ | ||||||||||||||
Literal meaning | revised script | ||||||||||||||
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Xiao'erjing is written from right to left, like other writing systems using the Perso-Arabic script. The Xiao'erjing writing system is unusual among Arabic script-based writing systems in that all vowels, long and short, are explicitly marked at all times with Arabic diacritics; this means that Xiao'erjing is technically an abugida, in contrast to the abjad classification of most Perso-Arabic script varieties. This is also in contrast to some other Arabic-based writing systems in China, such as the Uyghur Arabic alphabet, which uses full letters and not diacritics to mark short vowels.