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Chinese
Dialects
How many Chinese dialects are there? There are many
different Chinese dialects spoken among Chinese communities. In fact,
the difference between these dialects are so significant that some
people might even consider them as foreign `languages'; speakers of one
dialect may not understand speakers of another dialect.
There isn't an
accurate statistics on how many dialects exist, but it is widely
accepted that these dialects can be roughly classified into one of the
seven groups, they are: Putonghua (Mandarin), Gan, Kejia (Hakka),
Min(Fujanese), Wu (Shanghainess), Xiang and Yue (Cantonese). Each
language group contains a large number of dialects.
The main dialect
spoken in mainland China is Mandarin, it has been designated as the
official national language since 1913. Cantonese is widely spoken in
Hong Kong and many overseas Chinese communities. Taiwanese (sometimes
called Hoklo) is spoken in Taiwan.
Despite the large
differences among Chinese dialects, there is one thing in common - they
all share the same writing system based on Chinese characters.
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