Editing Santa language (section)

==The Tangwang language==
{{Main|Tangwang language}}

There are about 20,000 people in the north-eastern part [[Dongxiang Autonomous County|Dongxiang County]], who self-identify as Dongxiang or [[Hui people]] who do not speak Dongxiang, but natively speak a Dongxiang-influenced form of [[Mandarin Chinese]]. The linguist Mei W. Lee-Smith calls this the "Tangwang language" ({{lang-zh|s=唐汪话}}), based on the names of the two largest villages (Tangjia and Wangjia, parts of Tangwang [[Towns of China|Town]]) where it is spoken and argues it is a [[creole language|creolized language]].{{sfnp|Lee-Smith|1996}} According to Lee-Smith, the Tangwang language uses mostly Mandarin words and morphemes with Dongxiang grammar. Besides Dongxiang loanwords, Tangwang also has a substantial number of Arabic and Persian loanwords.{{sfnp|Lee-Smith|1996}}

Like Standard Mandarin, Tangwang is a tonal language, but grammatical particles, which are typically borrowed from Mandarin, but are used in the way Dongxiang morphemes would be used in Dongxiang, do not carry tones.{{sfnp|Lee-Smith|1996}}

For example, while the Mandarin plural suffix ''-men'' (们) has only very restricted usage (it can be used with personal pronouns and some nouns related to people),  Tangwang uses it, in the form ''-m'', universally, the way Dongxiang would use its plural suffix ''-la''. Mandarin pronoun ''ni'' (你) can be used in Tangwang as a possessive suffix (meaning "your").
Unlike Mandarin, but like Dongxiang, Tangwang has grammatical cases as well (however only four of them, unlike eight in Dongxiang).{{sfnp|Lee-Smith|1996}}