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Oct 13, 2023 · Learn about the 7 major Chinese dialect groups and how they came to be. Find out where they are spoken, how many speakers they have, and how they differ from Mandarin and each other.
Mandarin Chinese is the most popular dialect, and is used as a lingua franca across China. Linguists classify these varieties as the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Within this broad classification, there are between seven and fourteen dialect groups, depending on the classification.
May 13, 2024 · Chinese languages, principal language group of eastern Asia, belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. Chinese exists in a number of varieties that are popularly called dialects but that are usually classified as separate languages by scholars.
Conventional English-language usage in Chinese linguistics is to use dialect for the speech of a particular place (regardless of status) while regional groupings like Mandarin and Wu are called dialect groups. Other linguists choose to refer to the major groups as languages.
Learn about the diversity and complexity of Chinese dialects, from Mandarin to Cantonese, and how they differ from each other and from standard Chinese. Discover the history, culture, and challenges of speaking different dialects in China.
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Standard Chinese, known in China as Putonghua, based on the Mandarin dialect of Beijing, is the official national spoken language for the mainland and serves as a lingua franca within the Mandarin-speaking regions (and, to a lesser extent, across the other regions of mainland China).
Dec 8, 2023 · Officially, there are 302 living languages in China. Depending on your definition of “language” and “dialect,” this number can vary somewhat. The number of speakers of many of China’s minority languages and dialects has decreased in recent years, and some of them are now considered endangered.
