List of varieties of Chinese

"Chinese" is a blanket term covering many different varieties spoken across China. Mandarin Chinese is the most popular dialect, and is used as a lingua franca across China.

Linguists classify these varieties as the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Within this broad classification, there are between seven and fourteen dialect groups, depending on the classification.

The conventionally accepted set of seven dialect groups first appeared in the second edition of the dialectology handbook edited by Yuan Jiahua (1961). In order of decreasing number of speakers, they are:

1. Mandarin (including Beijing and Nanjing variants)
2. Wu (including the Shanghainese and Suzhounese variants)
3. Yue (including the Cantonese and Taishanese variants)
4. Min (including the Hokkien and Fuzhounese variants)
5. Hakka (Kejia)
6. Xiang (Hunanese)
7. Gan (Jiangxinese)

The revised classification of Li Rong, used in the Language Atlas of China (1987) added three further groups split from these:

1. Mandarin → Jin
2. Wu → Huizhou
3. Yue → Pinghua
4. Min
5. Hakka (Kejia)
6. Xiang
7. Gan

The number of speakers derived from statistics or estimates (2019) and were rounded:^[2][3][4]

In addition to the varieties listed below, it is customary to speak informally of dialects of each province (such as Sichuan dialect and Hainan dialect). These designations do not generally correspond to classifications used by linguists, but each nevertheless has characteristics of its own.

• 赣语/贛語

 

• 官话/官話

 

The number of speakers derived from statistics or estimates (2019) and were rounded:^[5]

• 徽语/徽語

Sometimes subcategory of Wu.

• 晋语/晉語

 

Sometimes a subcategory of Mandarin.

• 客家话/客家話

• 闽语/閩語

 

• 吴语/吳語

 

• 湘语/湘語

 

• 粤语/粵語

 

 

• 平话/平話

• 巴蜀语/巴蜀語

The non-Min dialects of Hainan were once considered Yue, but are now left unclassified:

In addition to the varieties within the Sinitic branch of Sino-Tibetan, a number of mixed languages also exist that comprise elements of one or more Chinese varieties with other languages.

The extensive 1987 Language Atlas of China groups Chinese local varieties into the following units:^[7]

• Supergroup (大区 dàqū), of which there are but two: Mandarin and Min
• Group (区 qū), corresponding to the varieties of Chinese of the ISO standard
• Subgroup (片 piàn), which may be mutually unintelligible with other subgroups^{[note 3]}
• Cluster (小片 xiǎopiàn), which may be mutually unintelligible with other clusters
• Local dialect (点 diǎn), which are the dialects sampled by the Atlas

In the list below,^[8] local dialects are not listed. Groups are in bold, subgroups are numbered, and clusters are bulleted.

Unclassified topolects

• She (the Chinese variety now spoken by the She people)
• Danzhou dialect
• Xianghua
• Shaoguan Tuhua
• Southern Hunan Tuhua

• Varieties of Chinese
• Written Chinese