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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.
- Contents
- The 7 Major Chinese Dialect Groups
- How Many Chinese Dialects Are there?
- The History of Language in China
1. Mandarin Chinese
Where it’s spoken:China, Taiwan Number of speakers:∼1.1 billion Mandarin, also known as Putonghua, is the official language of China.It’s spoken throughout the country and is taught and used in all schools. As a result, nearly every Chinese person can speak (or at least understand) Mandarin. Some regions prefer their local dialect, however, in addition to Mandarin. They are sometimes stereotyped as speaking “bad” Mandarin, which of course is not true. Mandarin began to be recognized as the la...
2. Cantonese Chinese
Where it’s spoken:China’s Guangdong province, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Macau Number of speakers:∼73 million Though not quite second in terms of speakers, Cantonese is the second most widely spread dialect spoken in China. Today, it’s largely spoken by the Tanka people, who are natives of the Pearl River Delta. The Cantonese Chinese dialectoriginated in ancient Guangzhou, also known as Canton City (hence, “Canton”ese!). It began with Middle Chinese and was then influenced by Proto-Tai. Then the l...
3. Wu Chinese
Where it’s spoken:China’s Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, Shanghai Number of speakers:∼80 million Used primarily in Shanghai, the Wu Chinese dialect is mostly known as Shanghainese. But while Shanghainese is one of the major Wu varieties, areas such as Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, Hangzhou, Jinhua, Shaoxing and others have their own varieties. The Wu Chinese dialect originated in the ancient Wu (吴) and Yue (越) kingdoms of China. These kingdoms were located in the modern-day Jiangsu and northern Z...
Linguists debate whether some Chinese dialects should be considered whole languages on their own. But for now, due to political reasons, China classifies them all as dialects, and there is at least some degree of mutual intelligibility between them. According to K&J Translations, China is home to over 302 individual languages and dialects. In fact,...
The Chinese language has a rich and complex history dating back thousands of years. As a member of the Sino-Tibetan language family, modern Chinese emerged from Proto-Sino-Tibetan and then Old and Middle Chinese, which is the original source of all dialects spoken today. The Chinese language is the oldest known written language on earth.The oldest ...
Standard Chinese takes its phonology from the Beijing dialect, with vocabulary from the Mandarin group and grammar based on literature in the modern written vernacular. It is one of the official languages of China and one of the four official languages of Singapore.
- Sino-TibetanChinese
Apr 12, 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.
Many Chinese dialects are at least as different from each other as the Romance languages are, which should classify them as separate languages. However, for now they are almost universally described as dialects, and since most of them are spoken locally and not taught, there is no real way to teach it but aurally, or through immersion.
There are several hundred languages in China. The predominant language is Standard Chinese, which is based on Beijingese, but there are hundreds of related Chinese languages, collectively known as Hanyu ( simplified Chinese: 汉语; traditional Chinese: 漢語; pinyin: Hànyǔ, 'Han language'), that are spoken by 92% of the population.
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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.
