Chinese language

Spoken Chinese

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The map on the right depicts the subdivisions ("languages" or "dialect groups") within Chinese.

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• Mandarin ?? or ?? (Beijing dialect)(shown in the map as divided into East and West groups, but also includes the Jianghuai and Huguang areas depicted in the map)
• Wu ? (Shanghainese and Old Suzhou dialect)
• Cantonese ? (Guangzhou dialect)
• Min Family ?, which linguists further divide into 5 to 7 subdivisions on its own, all of which are mutually unintelligible.
• Xiang ? (Changsha dialect)
• Hakka 客家 (Moi-yen/Meixian dialect)
• Gan ? (Nanchang dialect)

In parenthesis above are the culturally dominant or representative dialects of each language or dialect group today.

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Chinese linguists have recently distinguished 3 more groups from the traditional seven:

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• Jin ? from Mandarin
• Hui ? from Wu
• Pinghua ?? 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. See List of Chinese dialects for a comprehensive listing of individual dialects within these large, broad groupings.

Related Topics:
Danzhou dialect - Danzhou - Xianghua - Hunan - Shaozhou Tuhua - Guangdong - List of Chinese dialects

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There is also Standard Mandarin, the official standard language used by the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China, and Singapore. Standard Mandarin is based on the Beijing dialect, which is the dialect of Mandarin as spoken in Beijing, and the governments intend for speakers of all Chinese speech varieties to use it as a common language of communication. It is therefore used in government, in the media, and in instruction in schools.

Related Topics:
Standard Mandarin - Standard language - People's Republic of China - Republic of China - Singapore - Beijing dialect - Mandarin - Beijing

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There is much controversy around the terminology used to describe the subdivisions of Chinese, with some preferring to call Chinese a language and its subdivisions dialects, and others preferring to call Chinese a language family and its subdivisions languages. Even though Dungan is very closely related to Mandarin, not many people consider it "Chinese", because it is written in Cyrillic and spoken by people outside of China who are not considered Chinese in any sense.

Related Topics:
Language - Dialect - Language family - Dungan - People - China - Chinese

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It is common for speakers of Chinese to be able to speak several varieties of the language. Typically, in southern China, a person will be able to speak Standard Mandarin, the local dialect, and occasionally a more general regional dialect, such as Cantonese. Such polyglots will frequently code switch between Standard Mandarin and the local dialect, depending on the situation. A person living in Taiwan, for example, will commonly mix pronunciations, phrases, and words from Standard Mandarin and Taiwanese, and this mixture is considered socially appropriate under many circumstances.

Related Topics:
Cantonese - Code switch - Taiwan - Standard Mandarin - Taiwanese

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In the sense that the written language is based on Standard Mandarin and the dialects are (for the most part) spoken but not written languages, the situation in China is a complex and interesting case of diglossia.

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Is Chinese a language or a family of languages?

Spoken Chinese comprises many regional and often mutually unintelligible variants. In the West, many people are familiar with the fact that the Romance languages all derive from Latin and so have many underlying features in common while being mutually unintelligible. The linguistic evolution of Chinese is similar, while the socio-political context is quite different.

Related Topics:
Romance languages - Latin

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In Europe, political fragmentation gave rise to independent states which are roughly the size of Chinese provinces. This in turn generated a political desire to create separate cultural and literary standards to differentiate nation-states and to standardize the language within a nation-state. In China, a single cultural and literary standard (Classical Chinese and later, Vernacular Chinese) continued to exist while at the same time the spoken language continued to diverge between different cities and counties, much in the same manner as European languages diverged from each other, as a result of the sheer scale of the country, and the obstruction of communication by geography.

Related Topics:
Classical Chinese - Vernacular Chinese

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As a case in point, mountainous South China displays more linguistic diversity than the flat North China. There is even a saying in Chinese, nán chuán běi mǎ (南船北馬), meaning "boats in the south, horses in the north": the flat plains of northern China allow one to cross with relative ease using a horse, but the dense vegetation and numerous mountains and rivers of the south prevented this. In southern China, the most efficient means of transportation was by boat. For instance, Wuzhou is a city that lies about 120 miles upstream from Guangzhou, the capital of the Guangdong province in the south. By contrast, Taishan is only 60 miles southwest of Guangzhou, but several rivers must be crossed in order to reach it. Because of this, the dialect spoken in Taishan, relative to the dialect spoken in Wuzhou, has diverged more from the Standard Cantonese spoken in Guangzhou (Ramsey, 1987).

Related Topics:
Wuzhou - Guangzhou - Guangdong - Taishan - Standard Cantonese

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This diversity in spoken forms and commonality in written form has created a linguistic context that is very different from that of Europe. For example, in Europe, the language of a nation-state was usually standardized to be similar to that of the capital, making it easy, for example, to classify a language as French or Spanish. This had the effect of sharpening linguistic differences. A farmer on one side of the border would start to model his speech after Paris while a farmer on the other side would model his speech after Madrid. Moreover, the written language would be modelled after the dialect of the capital, and the use of local speech or mixtures of local speech would be considered substandard and erroneous. In China, this standardization occurred in less clear terms, with cultural influence being the dominant source of dialect standardization. Dialects spoken in China's regional political or cultural capitals were still seen as prestigious and widely used as the lingua franca throughout the entire region (much like Europe's case); their linguistic influence however were more dependent on the status and wealth of the capital than entirely on the political boundaries of the region.

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More relevant to China's situation is that of India. Though India has historically not been as unified as China, parts of it speaking multiple languages have long been united in various states, and many of its languages have not been standardized until the last few decades through political centralization. Sanskrit long played a role as a common written language. In India, however, the status of the different descendant languages of Sanskrit as separate languages is not in question; 18 of them are officially recognized national languages.

Related Topics:
India - Languages - Sanskrit

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Although Cantonese and Mandarin have low mutual intelligibility, these considerations are often not as important as cultural or nationalistic ones. In self-description, Chinese people generally consider Chinese to be one single language, partly because of the common written language. In order to describe dialects, Chinese people typically use the speech of location, for example Beijing dialect (北京話/北京话) for the speech of Beijing or Shanghainese (上海話/上海话) for the speech of Shanghai. Often there is not even any awareness among laypeople that these various "dialects" are then categorized into "languages" based on mutual intelligibility, though in areas of greater linguistic diversity (such as the southeast) people do think of dialects as being grouped into categories like Wu or Hakka. So although it is true that many parts of north China are quite homogeneous in language, while in parts of south China, major cities can have dialects that are only marginally intelligible even to close neighbours, there is a tendency to regard all of these as "Chinese dialects" — equal subvariations of a single Chinese language. As with the concept of Chinese language itself, the divisions among different "dialects" are mostly geographical rather than based on linguistic distance. For example, Sichuan dialect is considered as being distinct from Beijing dialect in the same way that Cantonese is, despite the fact that linguistically Sichuan dialect and Beijing dialect are both considered Mandarin dialects by linguists while Cantonese is not.

Related Topics:
Beijing dialect - Shanghainese - Wu - Hakka - Sichuan dialect

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As with many areas that have been linguistically diverse for a long time, whether the speech of a particular area of China should be considered a language in its own right or a dialect of another is not always clear, and many of the languages do not have sharp boundaries between them. The Ethnologue lists a total of fourteen, but the number varies between seven and seventeen depending on how strict the intelligibility criterion is.

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The distinction between a single language and a language family has major political overtones, and the amount of emotion put into this issue arises from political implications. To some, the description of Chinese as a language family implies that China should actually be considered several different nations, and challenges the notion that there is a single Han Chinese "race". For this reason, some Chinese are uncomfortable with the idea that Chinese is not a single language, as this perception might legitimize secessionist movements. Supporters of Taiwan independence do tend to be strong promoters of Min- and Hakka-language education, for example. Furthermore, for some, the implication that describing Chinese as multiple languages is more correct carries with it the implication that the notion of a single Chinese language and a single Chinese state or nationality is backward, oppressive, artificial, and out of touch with reality.

Related Topics:
Han Chinese - Race - Taiwan independence

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However, the links between ethnicity, politics, and language can be complex. For example, many Wu, Min, Hakka, and Cantonese speakers who would consider their own varieties to be separate spoken languages, and the Han Chinese race to be a single entity, do not regard these two positions as contradictory; instead they consider the Han Chinese to be an entity that is, and has always been, characterized by great internal diversity. Moreover, the government of the People's Republic of China officially states that China is a multinational state, and that the very term "Chinese" refers to a broader concept called Zhonghua Minzu that incorporates groups that do not natively speak Chinese at all, such as Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Mongols. (Those that do speak Chinese and are considered "ethnic Chinese" from an outsider point of view are called Han Chinese — this is seen as an ethnic and cultural concept, not a political one.) Similarly on Taiwan, one can find supporters of Chinese reunification who are also interested in promoting the local language, and supporters of Taiwan independence who have little interest in the topic. And, in an analogy to the mainland Chinese idea of Zhonghua minzu, the Taiwanese identity also incorporates Taiwanese aborigines, who are not at all considered Han Chinese because they speak Austronesian languages, predate Han Chinese migration to Taiwan, and are culturally and genetically linked to other Austronesian-speaking peoples such as the Polynesians.

Related Topics:
Han Chinese - People's Republic of China - Multinational state - Zhonghua Minzu - Tibetans - Uyghur - Mongols - Chinese reunification - Taiwanese aborigine - Austronesian languages - Polynesia

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