What is the Chinese Language
Chinese or the Sinitic language can be considered a language or language
family. Originally the

indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the
two branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages. About one-fifth of the
world’s population, or over 1 billion people, speak some form of Chinese as
their native language. The identification of the varieties of Chinese as
"languages" or "dialects" is controversial.
Spoken Chinese is distinguished by its high level of internal diversity,
though all spoken varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic. There are
between six and twelve main regional groups of Chinese (depending on
classification scheme), of which the most populous (by far) is Mandarin (c.
850 million), followed by Wu (c. 90 million), Min (c. 70 million) and
Cantonese (c. 70 million). Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible,
though some, like Xiang and the Southwest Mandarin dialects, may share
common terms and some degree of intelligibility. Chinese is classified as a
macrolanguage with 13 sub-languages in ISO 639-3, though the identification
of the varieties of Chinese as multiple "languages" or as "dialects" of a
single language is a contentious issue.
The standardized form of spoken Chinese is Standard Mandarin (Putonghua/Guoyu),
based on the Beijing dialect. Standard Mandarin is the official language of
the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan), as well
as one of four official languages of Singapore. Chinese—de facto, Standard
Mandarin—is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Of the
other varieties, Standard Cantonese is common and influential in
Cantonese-speaking overseas communities, and remains one of the official
languages of Hong Kong (together with English) and of Macau (together with
Portuguese). Min Nan, part of the Min language group, is widely spoken in
southern Fujian, in neighbouring Taiwan (where it is known as Taiwanese or
Hoklo) and in Southeast Asia (where it dominates in Singapore and Malaysia
and is known as Hokkien).