کتاب Discover China Student Book Two

Chinese is a natural language of a family of East Asian phonological and analytical languages ​​that make up the Chinese language branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Chinese languages ​​are spoken by most of the Han people and other ethnic minorities in China. 1.2 billion people (about 16% of the world’s population) speak a variety of Chinese as their first language.

Chinese varieties are considered local dialects of the Chinese language among their native speakers, regardless of the degree of mutual intelligibility. But due to the low level of mutual understanding, these varieties are classified as independent languages ​​(perhaps hundreds of languages) among linguists, and it is sometimes said that Chinese languages ​​are more diverse than Romance languages. Research on the historical relationship between Chinese languages ​​is beginning.

Currently, most classifications for these languages ​​include 7 to 13 major regional groups based on often superficial phonetic developments, the largest of which are Mandarin with about 800 million speakers (such as Sichuan), Min with about 75 million speakers (such as Hakkain), Wu pointed out with about 74 million speakers (like Shanghai) and Yui with about 68 million speakers (like Cantonese).

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