chinese language?

Chinese is first grouped in North and South dialects. The Northern dialects are more or less mutually intelligible (in fact, the differences between Northern Chinese dialects are remarkably small, considering the vast number of people speaking them and the vast area they cover), so usually they are grouped together as Mandarin Chinese in English. The term is somewhat misleading, since Mandarin also (and primarily) is the name of the official Chinese, more or less based on the Beijing dialect and taught to every Chinese child in school. Sometimes the North-Western Jin dialect is considered a separate dialect from the other Mandarin variants.

If the Northern dialects can be said to make one single dialect group (Mandarin), the same can't be said about South Chinese dialects, which are much, much more caried (and certainly not mutually intelligible!). Often they are classified in six different dialect groups, although the variation inside many of them is so great as to make them even internally not mutually intelligible.

The six main South Chinese dialect groups are:

1. Wu, including Shanghai dialect and other dialects South-West of Shanghai
2. Min, most famously the Fujian (Hokkien) and Taiwanese dialects
3. Yue, which is the same as Cantonese dialects
4. Xiang, in Hunan, the province with the hottest food in China ...
5. Hakka, which is considered a separate ethnic group (the other Chinese dialects are spoken by Han Chinese, the main Chinese ethnic group) believed to be moved in from North China to the South during the Song dynasty, and
6. Gan, spoken in Jiangxi.

As for the number of speakers, the North Chinese dialect group is by far the biggest, and is spoken by far more than half of the entire Chinese population (more than 800 million people). The Northern Jin variant of Mandarin have around 45 million speakers. Among the South Chinese dialect groups, the three bigger are Wu (80 million), Yue (70 million) and Min (60 million), whereas the smaller three each have 30-something million speakers.

Together this gives us seven types (dialect groups) if Chinese, or eight if you count Jin separately.

There are also some smaller dialects not included in those groups, and of course a lot of non-Chinese languages also spoken in China, like Tibetan, Uyghur, Mongolian, and a lot of less famous languages.

There are several Chinese dialects. Typically these languages use the same writing system, but the way the characters are pronounced is different. Most of the characters represent words, not letters or sounds.

Some of the major ones inlclude:
Mandarin (used in Beijing, the capital, and has something of a superior status)
Cantonese (spoken in the south, it is the language used in Hong Kong)
Jin (used in the north)
Wu (used along the "central coast" around Shanghai)
Min (used along the "south central coast)

Some others are Xian, Hui, and Ping

Lots of dialects.
China is a very diverse country.

i am a Chinese, i can tell you there is a thousand types of Chinese, for example, i can not understand the language which is spoken by the people who living the next town.
But the most popular Chinese is Official Chinese which is base in Beijing dialect.
other main dialect including:Kakka, Chaozhou,Fujian,Zhejiang

I‘m a Chinese who speak mandarin,Mandarin is widely used in the mainland of China,as the official language,divide from HK Chinese and Traditional Chinese.And Mandrain is for sure the most popular one in China.

There are many types of Chinese dialects, probably more then you can count, but the most popularly spoken is Mandarin Chinese, most popularly written is Simplified unless you go to Hong Kong which uses Traditional. The name of the characters pronunciation is called Pinyin. Thanks all you pretty much need to know, 你喜欢我希望! :D

Mostly Chinese people speak in Contonese or Mandarin.

If you learn, please learn Mandarin and Simplified Chinese.
It is the major one in mainland China, almost every young people understand it.

But if you consider to live in Hong Kong or Macau, you might consider Cantonese

Hong Kong, Macau speak Cantonese and write in Tradition Chinese
Taiwan speak Mandarin and write in Tradition Chinese
Rest of the mainland China speak Mandarin and write in Simplified Chinese


Actually Tradition Chinese and Simplified Chinese just different writing (Just like ABC & abc, but in more complicated way)

Wow, the last answer was very indepth. But I heard while living in china that there are over 50 different dialects. They probably mostly fall into the seven categories that the last answer mentioned but do vary basically from city to city. Even in the fujian province where they use the Minan dialect, the different cities have different variations of pronunciation as well as grammar. Anyway, thought I would add that

HK and TaiWang Written Language：Traditional Chinese.
MainLand Written Language: Simplified Chinese
Official Spoken Language:BeiJing dialect;
Different area,Different oral chinese

Hong Kong Chinese, China Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese!
All I know!
Most common are Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese!