The Khorchin (Mongolian ᠬᠣᠷᠴᠢᠨ Qorčin, Chinese 科尔沁 Kē'ěrqìn) dialect is a variety of Mongolian spoken in the east of Inner Mongolia, namely in Hinggan League, in the north, north-east and east of Hinggan and in all but the south of the Tongliao region. There were 2.08 million Khorchin Mongols in China in 2000, so the Khorchin dialect may well have more than one million speakers, making it the largest dialect of Inner Mongolia.
Contents
Consonants
/t͡ʃʰ/ has been replaced by /ʃ/, and in some varieties, /s/ is replaced by /tʰ/. Then, *u (<*ʊ<*u) has regressively assimilated to /ɑ/ before *p, e.g. *putaha (Written Mongolian budaγ-a) > pata ‘rice’. However, less systematic changes that pertain only to a number of words are far more notable, e.g. *t͡ʃʰital 'capacity'> Khorchin /xɛtl/. This last example also illustrates that Khorchin allows for the consonant nuclei /l/ and /n/ (cp. [ɔln] 'many').
Vowels
/ɑ/, /ɑː/, /ɛ/, /ɛː/, /ʊ/, /ʊː/, /u/, /uː/, /y/, /yː/, /i/, /iː/, /ɔ/, /ɔː/, /œ/, /œː/, /ə/,/əː/, /ɚ/
The large vowel system hails from the depalatalization of consonants that left former allomorphic vowels as phonemes, hence /œ/ and /ɛ/. On the other hand, *ö is absent, e.g. Proto-Mongolic *ɵŋke > Kalmyk /ɵŋ/, Khalkha /oŋk/ 'colour', but Khorchin /uŋ/, thus merging with /u/. /y/ is absent in the native words of some varieties and /ɚ/ is completely restricted to loanwords from Chinese, but as these make up a very substantial part of Khorchin vocabulary, it is not feasible to postulate a separate loanword phonology. This also resulted in a vowel harmony system that is rather different from Chakhar and Khalkha: /u/ may appear in non-initial syllables of words without regard for vowel harmony, as may /ɛ/ (e.g. /ɑtu/ 'horses' and /untʰɛ/ 'expensive'; Khalkha would have /ɑtʊ/ 'horses' and /untʰe/). On the other hand, /u/ still determines a word as front-vocalic when appearing in the first syllable, which doesn't hold for /ɛ/ and /i/. In some subdialects, /ɛ/ and /œ/ which originated from palatalized /a/ and /ɔ/, have changed vowel harmony class according to their acoustic properties and become front vowels in the system, and the same holds for their long counterparts. E.g. *mori-bar 'by horse' > Khorchin [mœːrœr] vs. Jalaid subdialect [mœːrər].
Morphology
Khorchin uses the old comitative /-lɛ/ to delimit an action within a certain time. A similar function is fulfilled by the suffix /-ɑri/ that is, however, restricted to environments in the past stratum. In contrast to other Mongolian varieties, in Khorchin Chinese verbs can be directly borrowed; other varieties have to borrow Chinese verbs as Mongolian nouns and then derive these to verbs. Compare the new loan /t͡ʃɑŋlu-/ 'to ask for money' < zhāngluó (张罗) with the older loan /t͡ʃəːl-/ 'to borrow' < jiè (借) that is present in all Mongolian varieties and contains the derivational suffix /-l-/.