Spoken Chinese In addition to the national
standard spoken language/dialect (Putonghua / Guoyu), every region
and locality has its own native variants of spoken Chinese. The map
below shows these subdivisions ("languages" or "dialect groups")
within Chinese. The traditionally recognized seven main groups, in
order of population size are:
Mandarin (Simplified Chinese: 官话 or 北方话; Traditional Chinese: 官話 or
北方話; Pinyin: běifānghuà or guānhuà), (c. 800 million), not to be
confused with Putonghua / Guoyu, often also called "Mandarin", the
official spoken language of China;
Wu 吳/吴 , which includes Shanghainese, (c. 90 million)
Cantonese 粵/粤, (c. 80 million)
Min 閩/闽, which includes Taiwanese, (c. 50 million)
Hakka 客家 or 客, (c. 35 million)
Xiang 湘, (c. 35 million)
Gan 贛/赣, (c. 31 million)
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. |
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