Language Centre Resources - Chinese

Chinese - Mandarin, Cantonese and Hokkien

Chinese is a member of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Spoken by c. 1,100 million people in China and Taiwan, and also in Malaysia, Hong Kong, Thailand and Singapore. The most widely spoken dialect is Mandarin.

Mandarin spoken in Beijing (Peking) is the basis for Chinese as an official language in China, Taiwan and Singapore. The term putonghua (common speech) is used.

Other dialects include: Gan; Wu; Northern Min (Min Pei), Southern Min or Hokkien; Keija or Hakka (mainly north-east Guangdong); Xiang or Hunanese (in Hunan); Yue or Cantonese (most of Guangdong, including Hong Kong, and most of Guangxi). Emigration from their regions has lead to Cantonese and Hokkien being spoken in many other countries.

SCRIPT = Chinese (characters) / Romanised systems: Wade-Giles (introduced in the mid 19th century' ; Pinyin (introduced in 1958, now the standard Roman spelling)