Spoken Chinese
Chinese
Geographic
distribution:
China
Genetic
classification:
Sino-Tibetan
Sinitic
Chinese
Subdivisions: Min Chinese
descendants of Middle Chinese
(see map)
Primary branches of Chinese
Spoken Chinese (simplified Chinese: ??; tra-
ditional Chinese: ??) comprises many region-
al
varieties,
the
primary
ones
being
Mandarin, Wu, Yue, and Min. These are not
mutually intelligible, but for sociological and
political reasons are considered a single
Chinese language.
Although the English word dialect is often
used to translate the Chinese term fangyan
(Chinese: ??; literally "regional speech"), the
lack of mutual intelligibility between the ma-
jor (and many minor) fangyan is at odds with
the normal English use of the word dialect.
However, the Chinese people are a single
ethnicity, a dominant factor in the concept of
a language. The nonce term topolect has
been coined as a more literal translation of
fangyan, but "variety" will be used here. (See
varieties of Chinese for more details.)
Classification
Chinese people make an impressional strong
distinction between written language (?,
Pinyin: wén) and spoken language (?/? yǔ).
English does not necessarily have this dis-
tinction. As a result the terms Zhongwen (??)
and Hanyu (??) in Chinese are both trans-
lated in English as "Chinese".
Within China, it is common perception
that these varieties are distinct in their
spoken forms only, and that the language,
when written, is common across the country.
Therefore even though China is home to hun-
dreds of relatively unique spoken languages,
literate people are usually able to communic-
ate through written language effectively.
Diversity
Chinese consists of several dialect con-
tinuums. Differences in speech generally be-
come more pronounced as distances in-
crease, with few radical breaks. However,
the degree of change in intelligibility varies
immensely depending on region. For ex-
ample, the varieties of Mandarin spoken in
all three northeastern Chinese provinces are
mutually
intelligible,
but
in
the small
p