Chinese Language Resources

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Chinese can be considered a language or a language family and is originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China. It forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages. About one-sixth of the world’s population, or over one billion people, speak some form of Chinese as their native language. The identification of the varieties of Chinese as "languages" or "dialects" is controversial. As a language family Chinese has an estimated nearly 1.2 billion speakers; Mandarin Chinese alone has around 850 million native speakers, outnumbering any other language in the world.

Spoken Chinese is recognized by its high level of diversity, although all spoken varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic. There are between 6 and 12 main regional dialects of Chinese of which the most populous (by far) is Mandarin (spoken by upwards of 850 million), followed by Wu (90 million), Min (70 million) and Cantonese (70 million). Most of these groups are unintelligible to one another, though some, like Xiang and the Southwest Mandarin dialects, share common words and some degree of recognition. Chinese is classified as a macrolanguage with thirteen sub-languages.

The standardized form of spoken Chinese is Standard Mandarin, based on the Beijing dialect. Standard Mandarin is the official language of the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China in Taiwan, as well as one of four official languages of Singapore. Of the other varieties, Standard Cantonese is common and influential in Cantonese-speaking overseas communities, and remains one of the official languages of Hong Kong (with English) and of Macau (with Portuguese).

Linguists classify Chinese as a language family, and even though dialects are not recognized amonst themselves, the writing system is the same. The diversity of Sinitic variants is similar to the Romance languages (Italian vs. French vs. Spanish), and greater than the Germanic languages and Slavic languages.

Chinese itself has a term for its unified writing system, zhongwen,while the closest equivalent used to described its spoken variants would be Hanyu ,“spoken language[s] of the Han Chinese) – this term could be translated to either “language” or “languages” since Chinese possesses no grammatical numbers. In the Chinese language, there is much less need for a uniform speech-and-writing continuum, as indicated by two separate character morphemes yu and  wen. Ethnic Chinese often consider these spoken variations as one single language for reasons of nationality and as they inherit one common cultural and linguistic heritage in Classical Chinese. Han native speakers of Wu, Min, Hakka, and Cantonese, for instance, may consider their own linguistic varieties as separate spoken languages, but the Han Chinese race as one – albeit internally very diverse – ethnicity. To Chinese nationalists, the idea of Chinese as a language family may suggest that the Chinese identity is much more fragmentary than it actually is and as such is often looked upon as culturally and politically provocative. Additionally, in Taiwan, it is closely associated with Taiwanese independence, where some supporters of Taiwanese independence promote the local Taiwanese Minnan-based spoken language.

Within the People’s Republic of China and Singapore, it is common for the government to refer to all divisions of the Sinitic language(s) beside standard Mandarin as fangyan (translated as “dialects”). Modern Chinese speakers of all kinds communicate using one formal standard written language, although this modern written standard is modeled after Mandarin.

Chinese is a language thats increasing gradually in popularity in other countries, largely due to the substantial business opportunities available.  Likewise, English and other Indo-European languages are increasing in popularity within the Chinese borders.  This international commerce should increase the number and quality of Chinese language learning resources in the coming years.

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There is no time like the present, and never have so many resources been at your disposal for learning a foreign language.  Check out the links and descriptions below to find a program that fits your needs.

Chinese Learning Resources on the Web

Chinese Software

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Chinese Books

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