Information from: “Red Book on Endangered Languages: Northeast Asia” . Juha Janhunen; Tapani Salminen (2000)
Threatened
60 percent certain, based on the evidence available
<50,000
total number of speakers: no exact data available; probably only a minority of the total ethnic group
DATE OF INFO
1993
SPEAKER NUMBER TRENDS
TRANSMISSION
MORE ON VITALITY
The language is probably still being learnt by some children in pre-school age, but native language skills are undermined in later age, even more than among the speakers of New Bargut, by the assimilative pressure of Standard Mongolian.
OTHER LANGUAGES USED BY THE COMMUNITY
Mongolian
LANGUAGE CONTEXT COMMENTS
Since children are educated in Standard Mongolian, there is a lot of variation as to how consistently any given individual will preserve Old Bargut features in his native speech; currently, a mixed variety of speech seems to be emerging, which may be classified as a dialect of Mongolian proper.
PLACES
Inner Mongolia, China
LOCATION DESCRIPTION
in the northern part of the Barga steppe region, within the Chen Baerhu Banner of Hulun Buir Aimak