The Chinese language (汉语/漢語, Pinyin: Hŕnyu, 华语/華語, Huáyu or 中文, Zhōngwén)
forms part of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. About one-fifth of the
people in the world speak some form of Chinese as their native language, making
it the language with the most native speakers.
In general, all varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic. However, Chinese is
also distinguished for a high level of internal diversity. Regional variation
between different variants/dialects is comparable to the Romance language
family; many variants of spoken Chinese are different enough to be mutually
incomprehensible. There are between six and twelve main regional groups
(depending on classification scheme), of which the most populous are Mandarin,
Wu, and Cantonese, in that order. The identification of the varieties of Chinese
as "languages" or "dialects" is a controversial issue.
The standardized form of spoken Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect, a
member of the Mandarin group; it is described in the article "Standard
Mandarin". Standard Mandarin is the official language of the People's Republic
of China and the Republic of China on Taiwan, as well as one of four official
languages of Singapore (together with English, Malay, and Tamil). Chinese—de
facto, Standard Mandarin—is one of the six official languages of the United
Nations (alongside English, Arabic, French, Russian, and Spanish). Spoken in the
form of Standard Cantonese, Chinese is one of the official languages of Hong
Kong (together with English) and of Macau (together with Portuguese).
The traditionally recognized seven main groups, in order of population size
are:
Mandarin 北方 or 官話/官话 (old name)
Wu 吳/吴
Cantonese 粵/粤
Min 閩/闽
Xiang 湘
Hakka 客家 or 客
Gan 贛/赣
Chinese linguists have recently distinguished 3 more groups from the traditional
seven:
Jin 晉/晋 from Mandarin
Hui 徽 from Wu
Ping 平話/平话 partly from Cantonese
There are also many smaller groups that are not yet classified, such as: Danzhou
dialect, spoken in Danzhou, on Hainan Island; Xianghua (乡话), not to be confused
with Xiang (湘), spoken in western Hunan; and Shaozhou Tuhua, spoken in northern
Guangdong. The Dungan language, spoken in Central Asia, is very closely related
to Mandarin. However, it is not generally considered "Chinese", because it is
written in Cyrillic and spoken by people outside China who are not considered
Chinese in any sense. See List of Chinese dialects for a comprehensive listing
of individual dialects within these large, broad groupings.
In general, the above languages / dialect groups do not have sharp
boundaries. As with many areas that were linguistically diverse for a long time,
it is not always clear how the speeches of various parts of China should be
classified. The Ethnologue lists a total of 14, but the number varies between
seven and seventeen depending on the classification scheme being followed. In
any case, some dialects belonging the same group may nevertheless be mutually
unintelligible, while other dialects split up among several groups may in fact
share many similarities due to geographical proximity.
This article Uses material from the
Wikipedia article "chinese" and is licensed under the
GNU Free Documentation License, which
means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including
additions) remains under this license.
