They are often called dialects. They are often treated as if they were just different accents of the same thing. But if you’ve ever tried to order food in Guangzhou after learning “hello” in Beijing, you know it doesn’t really work.
The reality is more chaotic. More complex. And much more interesting.
Linguists look at the Chinese languages (also known as Sinitic languages) and see a family tree that is deep and branching. They are one of the two main branches of the large Sino-Tibetan language family. About 95% of the Chinese population speaks it. Millions of others carry them in pockets across the globe.
Here’s the catch.
The main division in Chinese languages is the so-called Mandarin dialects—which have high mutual intelligibility and cover the entire Chinese language area north of the Yangtze River (Chang Jiang) and west of Hunan and Guangdong provinces—and several other dialect groups concentrated in Southeast China.
Far more people – over 885 million – speak a variant of Mandarin as their mother tongue than any other language in the world.
The Northern Mandarin dialect of Beijing is the basis of modern Standard Chinese, a speech norm that functions as a super-dialectal lingua franca.
Major dialect groups other than Mandarin include Wu (spoken in Shanghai), Gan, Xiang, Min (spoken in Fujian and Taiwan), Yue (including Cantonese spoken in Guangzhou [Canton] and Hong Kong), and Kejia (Hakka) spoken by the Hakka people.
Modern Chinese languages are tonal languages, with the number of tones varying from four in Modern Standard Chinese to nine in some dialects.
Why the confusion?
If they are so different, why does everyone call them dialects?
It’s because of the writing. All Chinese versions use a common ideogram or character system. They share a classical Chinese heritage. Traditionally, this common writing made all the varieties look like dialects of a single language.
Linguists disagree. They consider the main dialect groups as different languages.
Think about it.
Mandarin speakers often understand each other over long distances. But a Wu (Shanghai) speaker and a Yue (Cantonese) speaker may not share a single spoken word. Yet they can read the same newspaper. You can both write the same poem.
This creates a unique situation. You have one written language. Many spoken ones.
Breakdown of the main groups
Not all Chinese languages are the same. The distribution is geographical. The histories are distinct.
Mandarin dominates the north. It covers the area north of the Yangtze River. It extends west of Hunan and Guangdong. It is the language of the capital. It is the standard for education, media and administration. With over 885 million native speakers, it is the most spoken language in the world.
But look south.
Southeast is a linguistic patchwork. Here, you find groups that have been isolated for centuries. Mountains separate them. Rivers divide them.
- Wu : Spoken in Shanghai and surrounding areas.
- Gan : Found in Jiangxi
