Chinese language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the official language of China, Taiwan, and Singapore, also known as Mandarin, see Standard
Chinese. For other languages spoken in China, see Languages of China.
Unless otherwise specified, Chinese texts in this article are written in (Simplified 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

Hny (Chinese) written in traditional (top), simplified (middle)

characters and alternative name (bottom)

Native to China, Taiwan, Singapore

Ethnicity Han Chinese

Native speakers (1.2 billion cited 19842001)[1]

Language family Sino-Tibetan

Sinitic
Chinese
Early forms Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Standard forms Standard Mandarin

Standard Cantonese

Dialects Mandarin
Jin
Wu
Gan
Xiang
Min
Hakka
Yue
Ping
Huizhou

Writing system Simplified Chinese

Traditional Chinese

Transcriptions:
Bopomofo
Pinyin (Latin)
Xiao'erjing (Arabic)
Dungan (Cyrillic)
Chinese Braille
'Phags-pa script (Historical)

Official status

Official language in
Mandarin:[show]

Cantonese:[show]

Regulated by National Commission on Language and Script

Work (China)[2]
National Languages Committee (Taiwan)
Civil Service Bureau (Hong Kong)
Promote Mandarin Council(Singapore)
Chinese Language Standardisation
Council(Malaysia)

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

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
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without
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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, you
may see question marks, boxes,
or other symbols instead
of Chinese characters.

Chinese (/; Hny or ; Zhngwn) is a group of related, but in many cases mutually
unintelligible, language varieties, forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language 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 some form of Chinese as their first language.