Varieties of Chinese

Varieties Of Chinese

Chinese (hànyǔ 汉语/漢語 or zhōngguóhuà 中国话/中國話) comprises many regional language varieties sometimes grouped together as the Chinese dialects, the primary ones being Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese, and Min. These are not mutually intelligible, and even many of the regional varieties (especially Min) are themselves composed of a number of non-mutually-intelligible subvarieties. As a result, the majority of linguists typically refer to these so-called "varieties" as separate languages. For ideological and political reasons, however, most Chinese speakers and Chinese linguists perceive them to be variations of a single Chinese language, and refer to them as dialects, translating the Chinese terms huà 话, yǔ 語, and fāngyán 方言. The neologism topolect has been coined as a more literal translation of fangyan in order to avoid the connotations of the term "dialect" (which in its normal English usage suggests mutually intelligible varieties of a single language), and to make a clearer distinction between "major varieties" (separate languages, in Western terminology) and "minor varieties" (dialects of a single language). In this article, however, the generic term "variety" will be used.

Chinese people make a strong distinction between written language (文, Pinyin: wén) and spoken language (语/語 yǔ). English does not necessarily have this distinction. As a result the terms Zhongwen (中文) and Hanyu (汉语/漢語) in Chinese are both translated in English as "Chinese". Within China, it is common perception that these varieties are distinct in their spoken forms only, and that the language, when written, is common across the country.