Chinese language overview
Standard Mandarin (Putonghua 普通话 / Guoyu 国语 / Huayu 华语) is a standardized form of spoken Chinese, based on the Beijing dialect, which is part of a larger group of North-Eastern and South-Western dialects, often taken as a separate language.
Chinese or the Sinitic language(s) (汉语／漢語 Hànyǔ; 华语／華語 Huáyǔ; 中文 Zhōngwén) is a language family consisting of languages which are mostly mutually unintelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms the Sinitic languages branch of the two branches of the Sino-Tibetan family or sprachbund or languages. About one-fifth of the world’s population, or over one billion people, speak some form of Chinese as their native language. Internal divisions of Chinese are usually perceived by their native speakers as dialects of a single Chinese language, rather than separate languages, although this identification is considered inappropriate by some linguists and Sinologists.
Spoken Chinese is distinguished by its high level of internal diversity, although all spoken varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic. There are between seven and thirteen main regional groups of Chinese (depending on classification scheme), of which the most spoken, by far, is Mandarin (about 850 million), followed by Wu (90 million), Cantonese (Yue) (70 million) and Min (50 million). Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible, although some, like Xiang and the Southwest Mandarin dialects, may share common terms and some degree of intelligibility. Chinese is classified as a macrolanguage with 13 sub-languages in ISO 639-3, though the identification of the varieties of Chinese as multiple "languages" or as "dialects" of a single language is a contentious issue.
Standard Mandarin (Putonghua / Guoyu / Huayu) is a standardized form of spoken Chinese, based on the Beijing dialect, which is part of a larger group of North-Eastern and South-Western dialects, often taken as a separate language. The Mandarin Chinese language is referred to as 官话／官話 Guānhuà or 北方话／北方話 Běifānghuà in Chinese. Standard Mandarin is the official language of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC, also known as Taiwan), as well as one of four official languages of Singapore. Chinese—de facto, Standard Mandarin—is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Of the other varieties, Standard Cantonese is common and influential in Guangdong Province and Cantonese-speaking overseas communities, and remains one of the official languages of Hong Kong (together with English) and of Macau (together with Portuguese). Min Nan, part of the Min language group, is widely spoken in southern Fujian, in neighbouring Taiwan (where it is known as Taiwanese or Hoklo) and in Southeast Asia (known as Hokkien in Singapore and Malaysia).