China is a vast country comprising a number of different provinces, and each province boasts its own Chinese dialect or language. These languages are mostly from the Sino-Tibetan family, although some languages, such as Uyghur, a Turkic language, are from entirely different language families. The best known varieties of Chinese are probably Mandarin, the official language of both mainland China and of Taiwan, and Cantonese, which is spoken in the Canton region and widely throughout the Chinese Diaspora. Other important varieties of Chinese include Hakka, Min, and Yue.
There is debate over whether the varieties of Chinese are different languages or different dialects of a particular macrolanguage. This is partly for linguistic reasons, and partly due to political reasons. However, it is true that the varieties tend not to be mutually intelligible. This means that a speaker of one variety will not necessarily understand a speaker of another variety. The varieties do share a number of similarities in that they are all tone-based and analytic, a linguistic term meaning that each word usually comprises one unit of meaning. The written forms of Chinese tend to be mutually intelligible, although two separate forms of written Chinese have emerged in recent years, with simplified Chinese now existing alongside the traditional Chinese characters frequently used in areas such as Taiwan.
Foreigners who are interested in learning Chinese would be best to consider a course in Mandarin, which is spoken widely throughout China and the Diaspora as a business language. It is estimated that worldwide there are approximately 850 million native speakers of Mandarin. Many speakers of other dialects will be able to speak some Mandarin, and Mandarin is frequently associated with literature and the arts, and is also used in politics and as a language of instruction. Mandarin is the official language of China, and is an official language of Singapore.
Cantonese is another widely used language, and is spoken in several prominent provinces of China, as well as Hainan Island, in Hong Kong, Singapore, Macau, and Malaysia. It is a common language among Chinese immigrants. Given Cantonese’s prevalence in economically influential areas such as Hong Kong, Cantonese is also becoming a popular language among foreigners, with numbers of speakers continuing to grow worldwide.
While all of the Chinese varieties are tone based, foreigners should be aware that not all varieties have the same tones or the same tone patterns. While Mandarin, for example, has four tones, Cantonese has additional tones. Tones are notoriously problematic for speakers of European languages, and can be very challenging for a new learner. Chinese characters, which must be learned independently of their pronunciations, are also challenging for new users. This is in part because of the fact that a grapheme cannot be easily linked with a particular sound, like in European languages, and also because of the thousands of Chinese characters that need to be learnt in order to become literate.
With China’s economy on the march, If you’re considering learning a language that may prove useful in the business world in years to come, a Chinese language would be worthy of your consideration.