[AGL] Re: "There is no Chinese language"?

[Jon Ford]

Harry claims there is no Chinese language per se. Here's some more precise 
information about the two major types and dialects of Chinese. Basically, 
everybody in China learns Mandarin, the official national language, and 
everyone uses the same basic writing system with characters. So they can 
communicate across regional borders (sort of):
Jon

Chinese Dialects
>From Jun Shan,
Your Guide to China Online.

There are many Chinese dialects in China. It is hard to guess how many 
dialects exist, but they can be roughly classified into one of the seven 
large groups, i.e., Putonghua (Mandarin), Gan, Kejia (Hakka), Min, Wu, Xiang 
and Yue (Cantonese). Each language group contains a large number of 
dialects. These are the Chinese languages spoken mostly by the Han people, 
which represents about 92 percent of the total population. We will not get 
into the non-Chinese languages spoken by the minorities here, such as 
Tibetan, Mongolian and Miao.

The dialects from the seven groups are quite different. For example, a 
Mandarin speaker in northern China usually understands little Cantonese, but 
a non-Mandarin speaker usually can speak some Mandarin with a strong accent.


This is largely because Mandarin has been the official national language 
since 1913. Mandarin or Putonghua is mainly based on the Beijing dialect. 
Despite the large differences among Chinese dialects, there is one thing in 
common for them -- they all share the same writing system based on Chinese 
characters.

A distinguishing feature of the Chinese languages is tonal. Mandarin has 
four tones and Cantonese has more than four tones.