[2] Traditionally, both languages are indicated by the term Yellow Uygur, from the autonym of the Yugur.
Eastern Yugur speakers are said to have passive bilingualism with Inner Mongolian, the standard spoken in China.
[3] Eastern Yugur is a threatened language with an aging population of fluent speakers.
[6] Grigory Potanin recorded a glossary of Salar, Western Yugur, and Eastern Yugur in his 1893 book written in Russian, The Tangut-Tibetan Borderlands of China and Central Mongolia.
[7][8][9][10][11][12] The phonemes /ç, çʰ, ɕ, ɕʰ, ʂ, ʑ/ appear exclusively in Chinese loanwords.