Transcription of a Dongxiang letter

This letter was published online on 18/12/2015 in the context of an article written by Qian Lihua (钱丽花) on the China Writer website (Qian 2015) ‘Implementation program of the Gansu Province’s cultural resources assessment, classification and grading’ (甘肃省文化资源普查和分类分级评估工作实施方案). The Cultural Research team, commissioned by the Civil Affairs Commission of Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture of the Gansu Province, aimed at collecting written materials in Tibetan, Dongxiang, Bao’an and Eastern Yugur languages, but also to evaluate the vitality of this written systems among these populations. The author indicates that the letter is a personal communication that has been collected during the investigation conducted in October 2015. This paper is based on this letter. It has been transcribed in digital format by Mana Mortazavian, a native Persian currently studying as a Master’s degree student at Ca’Foscari University of Venice. The letter was then read and recorded by Ma Fuming, a Sini-script calligraphy master and native of the Dongxiang language. The two authors of the present paper transcribed it in Dunxian pinyin and IPA, and translated it in English and Standard Chinese. The letter was read out loud and recorded by Ma Fuming; the recording will be soon available through Pangloss platform.
The present work is presented as follow. Each sentence comprises two sets of transcriptions. The first set include a first line of the original handwritten text of the letter, a second line with the Persian numeric version of the same, and a third line with the Dongxiang pinyin transcription. The second set of transcriptions includes a first line of Dongxiang pinyin, a second line is IPA, a third line with the gloss and a fourth line with English and Chinese translation.