Chinese dialects
2 min readChina is a vast land with a huge population. Although the same written language is used throughout the country, spoken Chinese varies widely, with different regions having their own dialects and pronunciation. There are seven main language groups in China.
They are the northern dialect and the six primary southern dialects-Wu, Xiang(Hunanese), Gan(Jiangxi dialect), Hakka, Cantonese, and Min(Fujianese). Each dialect reflects its local culture. The northern dialect, characterized by the dialect spoken in Beijing, has the largest range of any of China’s language groups. It accounts for three-quarters of the country’s spoken Chinese, and is used by over 70% of the majority Han ethnic group.
In 1955, the Chinese government officially established Mandarin Chinese, based on the northern dialect, as the standard spoken form of modern Chinese. Standard Mandarin, known in Chinese as putonghua, or”the common speech,”was defined as”the modern common language of the Han Chinese people, utilizing Beijing pronunciation as its standard, based on the northern Chinese dialect, and employing the grammar of modern vernacular written Chinese.”
In 19 56, the government undertook extensive studies of the vocabulary and pronunciation of the Beijing dialect, and finalized the standard pronunciation of “the common speech.”In 19 58, the government announced the establishment of Hanyu Pinyin, the “Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet,”a system of standardized romanization for representing the pronunciation of Mandarin Chinese. Through several decades of revision, enhancement, and implementation, standard Mandarin Chinese has become the fundamental means of communication among the Chinese people.
