Varieties of Chinese

Uncommon card · No. 92859

There are hundreds of local Chinese language varieties forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeastern part of mainland China. The varieties are typically classified into ten primary groups: Mandarin, Jin, Wu, Hui, Min, Xiang, Gan, Hakka, Yue, and Pinghua though some varieties remain unclassified. These groups are neither clades nor individual languages defined by mutual intelligibility, but are identified by common correspondences with selected features of Middle Chinese. Chinese varieties differ in their phonology, vocabulary and syntax. Southern varieties tend to have fewer initial consonants than northern and central varieties, but more often preserve the Middle Chinese final consonants. All have phonemic tones, with northern varieties tending to have fewer distinctions than southern ones. Many have tone sandhi, with the most complex patterns in the coastal area from...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Map_of_sinitic_languages-en.svg: Wu Yue (original); Gohu1er (SVG) derivative work: Kanguole (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0