1.1 Varieties of Chinese

Apart from Mandarin, the other six major varieties of spoken Chinese are Cantonese, Gan, Hakka, Min, Wu and Xiang. The map below shows the areas of China in which they are spoken and by approximately how many people, as well as the parts of China where non-Chinese languages are predominantly spoken.

Maximise

(Adapted from ‘Chinese dialects in China’, 1987, www.rcl.cityu.edu.hk/atlas/20/A2_20.jpg, last accessed 29 May 2009, and Wu Yue, ‘Map of the Sinitic languages’, 2004, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_sinitic_languages-en.svg, last accessed 29 May 2009)

Figure 2 Varieties of Chinese

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The majority of east China and west China predominantly speak Mandarin (circa 800 million speakers). In the far southeast, however, other varieties are spoken. For example, in Shanghai and Hangzhou the predominant variety of Chinese spoken is Wu (circa 75 million). Also in the southeast area, approximately 80 million speak Cantonese, approximately 50 million speak Min, 35 million speak Xiang, 35 million speak Hakka and 20 million speak Gan. In central China the map is coded as the population speaking ‘Other languages’.

Figure 2 Varieties of Chinese

There is some debate among linguists about whether the different varieties of Chinese should be regarded as dialects or as languages in their own right. Interpretations depend on how ‘language’ and ‘dialect’ are defined. Furthermore, each dialect group consists of many sub-dialects, several of which are spoken widely enough to be categorised by some linguists as major dialects (or languages) that could justifiably be added to the list above.

The samples presented here teach Mandarin Chinese in its standardised modern form. Standard Mandarin Chinese is commonly referred to as 普通话 pŭtōng huà (common speech) in the People’s Republic of China, 国语 guó yŭ (national language) in Taiwan and 华语 huá yŭ (Chinese language) in Singapore. In this course, Mandarin Chinese will simply be referred to as ‘Chinese’.

Chinese is often perceived in the West as a difficult language, mainly because of its different character script and the fact that it is a tonal language – i.e. it uses tones to distinguish meanings. Chinese grammar, on the other hand, is quite simple compared to that of many European languages. There is no conjugation, number agreement or case change, so you only ever have to learn a word in one form.

To start, test your knowledge of the Chinese language with a quiz in Activity 1. You will then move on to learn about it in more depth by exploring pinyin, tones and word formation.