Amateur scholar brings a dialect to the fore

Ding Xu's computer is only 2 meters away from his wife's sewing machine, a breadwinner for the family. With the sound of the sewing machine in the background, Ding spent 34 years writing the first book on the roots of Hui people's dialect in Xi'an, Northwest China's Shaanxi province.

At the ceremony to launch the 500-page book in May in Xi'an, many Hui culture scholars, while lauding his work, said Ding had done something they should have done long ago.

"This is a wonderful work on language contact," says Sun Lixin, a researcher at the Shaanxi Academy Social Sciences. Language contact refers to the use of a dialect by people who influence the semantic development of a multiethnic community, according to Sun.