China speaks which language

Move Over Double-O Seven. Mandarin is one of many dialects of Chinese, and it's important to understand the diversity of dialects across China. Episode Chinese Tones. Jesse Appell dives into the often confusing tones that make the Chinese language what it is. But while the tones can be frustrating to master, there's also a sort of musical beauty to them.

Episode Small Bills. This year, Mid-Autumn Festival fell on September To celebrate this holiday, we asked Kiril Bolotnikov, a junior at NYU Shanghai, to report on how international students celebrate this Chinese holiday. Episode Same Food New Style. Episode 9: Social Media Madness. In this episode, Jesse Appell laments all the fake "bot" followers his show is attracting. So he hits the streets of Beijing to dredge up real fans. Episode 8: Chengyu Game Show. In this episode, game show contestants try to make sense of Chinese "chengyu" — four word phrases with deep meanings attached to them.

Chinese Slang : Part II. Episode 7: Chinese Slang Game Show. However, despite the above figures, there are some other figures worth taking note of:. These facts both point towards the same trend: the use of Mandarin is growing at an incredibly fast rate.

Firstly, this is because Mandarin is the language of instruction in the education system across China. And secondly, as people move to cities in such large numbers, the use of Mandarin as a common language of communication amongst people from different parts of China who would previously have spoken a different Chinese language or dialect grows. Both of these factors also contribute to the ongoing rise in fluency the language is experiencing.

But just as you reached this sentence, or perhaps one of the previous few, your noticed from the corner of your eye that there was another sentence in bold below followed by text…. Answer 4: Mostly — and increasingly- Mandarin, but some Cantonese, too. Again, this is largely accurate but not inarguable. And what how do those nearly 87 million non-fluent speakers of Mandarin get by?! Well, this answer brings us back to the first answer: for the most part, they speak Chinese languages or dialects.

As you can see from the diagram below, there are many different Chinese languages groups and dialects. Picture 4. Sino-Tibetan Languages family tree. The Han language is divided into seven primary language groups or varieties that are so different they aren't mutually intelligible much like German and English.

The languages most frequently supported and studied include: Chinese Mongolian Tibetan Uyghur Zhuang. Standard Chinese Putonghua is a type of Mandarin Chinese that's considered the official spoken language of mainland China.

China's language laws do not apply to Macua or Hong Kong which have other official languages like Portuguese, English, or Cantonese. Standard Mandarin or Standard Chinese is based on the original Beijing dialect of the language. The Gan dialect is spoken in western areas of China, particularly the Jiangxi province. The Min dialect is spoken primarily in the Jujian province on the southern coast and has a great degree of variance from other dialects. The Wu dialect or Shanghainese is spoken in the Shanghai area.