For the official language of the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, and Singapor

e, see Standard Chinese. For other languages spoken in China, see Languages of C
hina.
Unless otherwise specified, Chinese texts in this article are written in (Si
mplified Chinese/Traditional Chinese; Pinyin) format. In cases where Simplified
and Traditional Chinese scripts are identical, the Chinese term is written once.
Chinese


or
Hny or Zhngwn
Hanyu trad simp.svg
Hny (Chinese) written in traditional (left) and simplified (right) characters
Native to
China, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, the United States, Canada, I
ndonesia, Philippines, and other places with significant overseas Chinese commun
ities
Ethnicity
Han
Native speakers
unknown (1.2 billion cited 19842001)[1]
Language family
Sino-Tibetan
Sinitic
Chinese
Standard forms
Standard Chinese
Dialects
Mandarin
Jin
Wu (incl. Shanghainese)
Huizhou
Gan
Xiang
Min (incl. Amoy, Teochew, Hoochew)
Hakka
Yue (incl. Cantonese, Taishanese)
Ping
Writing system
Chinese characters, zhuyin fuhao, Latin, Arabic, Cyrillic, braille. Anci
ent use of 'Phags-pa script.
Official status
Official language in
China
Hong Kong
Macau
Taiwan
Singapore
Burma Wa State, Burma
United Nations
Recognised minority
language in
Canada

Malaysia
United States
Philippines
Regulated by
China National Commission on Language and Script Work[2]
Taiwan National Languages Committee
Singapore Promote Mandarin Council
Malaysia Chinese Language Standardisation Council
Language codes
ISO 639-1
zh
ISO 639-2
chi (B)
zho (T)
ISO 639-3
zho inclusive code
Individual codes:
cdo Min Dong
cjy Jinyu
cmn Mandarin
cpx Pu Xian
czh Huizhou
czo Min Zhong
gan Gan
hak Hakka
hsn Xiang
mnp Min Bei
nan Min Nan
wuu Wu
yue Yue
och Old Chinese
ltc Late Middle Chinese
lzh Classical Chinese
Glottolog
sini1245
Linguasphere
79-AAA
{{{mapalt}}}
Map of the Sinophone world
Legend:
Countries identified Chinese as a primary, administrative, or native language
Countries with more than 5,000,000 Chinese speakers
Countries with more than 1,000,000 Chinese speakers
Countries with more than 500,000 Chinese speakers
Countries with more than 100,000 Chinese speakers
Major Chinese-speaking settlements
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Chinese languages (Spoken)

Traditional Chinese
Simplified Chinese



Literal meaning
Han language
[show]Transcriptions
Chinese language (Written)
Chinese

Literal meaning
Chinese text
[show]Transcriptions
This article contains Chinese text. Without proper rendering support, yo
u may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Chinese characters.

Chinese Listeni/taniz/ (

/ ; Hny or ; Zhngwn) is a group of related but i

unintelligible language varieties, forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan languag
e family. Chinese is spoken by the Han majority and many other ethnic groups in
China. Nearly 1.2 billion people (around 16% of the world's population) speak so

me form of Chinese as their first language.

The varieties of Chinese are usually described by native speakers as dialects of
a single Chinese language, but linguists note that they are as diverse as a lan
guage family.[a] The internal diversity of Chinese has been likened to that of t
he Romance languages, but may be even more varied. There are between 7 and 13 ma
in regional groups of Chinese (depending on classification scheme), of which the
most spoken, by far, is Mandarin (about 960 million), followed by Wu (80 millio
n), Yue (70 million) and Min (70 million). Most of these groups are mutually uni
ntelligible, although some, like Xiang and the Southwest Mandarin dialects, may
share common terms and some degree of intelligibility. All varieties of Chinese
are tonal and analytic.

Standard Chinese (Putonghua/Guoyu/Huayu) is a standardized form of spoken Chines

e based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. It is the official language of China
and Taiwan, as well as one of four official languages of Singapore. It is one o
f the six official languages of the United Nations. The written form of the stan
dard language (; Zhngwn), based on the logograms known as Chinese characters (
/
s shared by literate speakers of otherwise unintelligible dialects.
Of the other varieties of Chinese, Cantonese (the prestige variety of Yue) is in
fluential in Guangdong province and in Hong Kong and Macau, and is widely spoken
among overseas communities. Min Nan, part of the Min group, is widely spoken in
southern Fujian, in neighbouring Taiwan (where it is known as Taiwanese or Hokl
o) and in Southeast Asia (also known as Hokkien in the Philippines, Singapore, a
nd Malaysia). There are also sizeable Hakka and Shanghainese diasporas, for exam
ple in Taiwan, where most Hakka communities are also conversant in Taiwanese and
Standard Chinese.