Chinese contains 3 completely different languages!

Mandarin: Standard Official Language, Spoken by most of Chinese.

Cantonese: Only in GuangDong Province and HongKong.

Taiwanese: Only in South FuJian Province and Taiwan.

But more and more people who speak dialect languages before begin to Pay more attention to Mandarin and try to speak Mandarin as possible as they can in everyday's conversation.

Dear Chinese,

You forgot about Shanghainese (Wu) and Hakka (Kejia). I'm sure there are more too.

In my family, we usually speak Mandarin at home because Dad's native regional language is Shanghainese, Mum's is Taiwanese, and I learnt Cantonese at school. So, Mandarin is a bit of compromise, I guess?

Anyway, I must add to Chinese's list in the format he used...

Wu (Shanghainese): In Shanghai City, Northern Zhejiang province, and Southern Jiangsu province.

Kejia (Hakka): In certain parts of Fujian, Guangdong, and Taiwan.

Also, I forgot to mention that perhaps "Minnan" would be a better umbrella term than "Taiwanese" for the regional tongues of Taiwan and Fujian.

I know someone who speaks Twaisan. I think theres a lot more dialects.

There are officially eight distinct Chinese (Sinitic) languages. Each has its own dialects. The common mistake is thinking that cantonese/mandarin/taiwanese are merely different dialects when infact they're different languages-though closely related, like Spanish/Italian/French.

You are forgetting Bôrk-jukà. They speak it in the mountainous regions of Sûmar Kolajuka.

Jiskù Koôpla! (Good Luck)

>whats amazing with some dialects in China they use the same characters for each word. So if they don't speak the same language all they need to do is to write it down. [Guest]

The writing is what interests me most. I studied Chinese on my own for a few months a couple of decades ago (unfortunately I didn't use the language enough to remember what I learned), concentrating on the writing and not trying to learn the spoken languages. I familiarized myself with some of the Wade-Giles transliterations but didn't learn the tones. The written symbols for 'China', I believe, would stand for 'middle kingdom' no matter which dialect the person speaks. [These Chinese words may not display, depending on available fonts.] Even without knowing Chinese a person can figure out which symbol stands for 'middle'.

China (traditional Chinese) - 中國
China (simplified Chinese) - 中国

Transliterated Mandarin pronunciation without tones :

(Older Wade-Giles system) Chung kuo
(Hanyu Pinyin system) Zhong guo

I'd be curious to know if the pronunciation of the name of the country itself varies from region to region, or is it always the same. How about the pronunciation of 'Chinese', meaning the person -- 中國人?

>>>This is probably true even though several of them seem to be spoken in very small regions in central and south-central China from the linguistic maps I've seen of China.

One variety of Chinese that is not well-known is Dingan (Russian Dinganski) spoken in Russian Turkistan. Its speakers are Chinese Muslims, mostly from northwestern China and Shaanxi province who fled to the Russian Empire in 1878 after a revolt in China.<<<

Oh my... this is probably one of the rarest things I've read in this forum... I didn't know there was such thing as "Chinese Muslims"!

>>whats amazing with some dialects in China they use the same characters for each word. So if they don't speak the same language all they need to do is to write it down.<<

All Chinese "dialects" (languages) do use the same writing system, but it is based on Mandarin. A native speaker of Cantonese or Hakka, for example, might read a newspaper with their own pronunciation of each character, and understand the content--but that would not be how they would actually write down their own spoken language if they could. At least that's my understanding of the situation--maybe some native speakers can verify.

(By the way, having the same "character" with different pronunciations is not such a foreign concept, even outside of languages like Chinese and Japanese. Most of the world uses the same symbols for numbers, but "421" can be pronounced four hundred twenty-one, cuatrocientos veintiuno, quatre cent vingt et un, sìbăi èrshi yī, etc.)

>=Oh my... this is probably one of the rarest things I've read in this forum... I didn't know there was such thing as "Chinese Muslims"!=<

Yes, that might have been a shock to some people. Did you know that there are Chinese Jews also? They mostly come from Shanghai and their numbers are much smaller than Chinese Muslims but they do exist.

I'm living in North China. I speak Mandarin, Official Chinese,

In China Mainland, people all write in Chinese Simplified,

In HongKong and Taiwan, people write in Chinese Traditional,

But in Singapore, People changed to Write Ch-Simp instead of Ch-Trad.

And, Chinese characters, especially Ch-Traditional Style, is in the extreme difficult for foreigner to learn well, but as for me I'm very accomplished in Ch-Traditional characters.

I think, for people those who're living in China Mainland, it's very easy to write Ch-Traditional characters, but it's comparatively so hard for us Northern Chinese to speak Southern dialects such as "Minnanese, Cantonese, Hakka or Shanghainese, because these dialects are greatly different from Mandarin, just like other languages for us Northern people.

But I'm very gratified that Mandarin is the most important official language in China, even the Southern people should study it hard.

<<when infact they're different languages-though closely related, like Spanish/Italian/French.>>

How understandable to each other are they. For example like a native Spanish speaker I'd say I understand spoken French less than 1%(very optimist:), Italian 40%, Portuguese 60% maybe more paying good attention, all based on for example TV news. But written French maybe 90% or more, Italian 60% and Portuguese almost 100%.

Chinese:

Why are the 'dialects' so hard for Mandarin speakers to learn? Isn't one of the 'Four Heavenly Kings' of the Cantopop scene, Leon Lai, is himself from Beijing?

Faye Wong (Wang Fei) can also naturally speak Cantonese. Ditto for the vast number of native Mandarin speakers in the HK entertainment industry.

It's not about the level of difficulty, but the attitude and willingness to learn. I am sorry to say, but your attitude is just a little pompous and insufferable.