| Chinese Language Day is the 20th April. It’s a time chosen to fit in with the Chinese celebration of Guyu, which honours Cangjie – the four-eyed mythical figure who is traditionally understood to have created Chinese characters in the time of the Yellow Emperor, around 5000 years ago… The United Nations’ series of “language days” are designed to promote the use of the six official languages of the UN as well as to celebrate cultural and linguistic diversity. In this article, we’ll take a look at the languages spoken in China with a similar goal in mind. What is the language of China? Mandarin is the most-spoken language in the world, with over 1.5 billion speakers. When most people think of “Chinese”, it is Mandarin that they are picturing. But Mandarin Chinese is far from the only variant of the Chinese language – or the only language spoken in China… In fact, there are a great number of Chinese languages. These include eight primary spoken dialects within mainland China, which are – in the main – mutually unintelligible. Remember – this is a country which is both very large and very, very old. Different regions within the vast expanse of terrain that is China can be separated not only by great distances but also by broadly impassable topographical features such as mountain ranges. Understanding the situation is complicated by the fact that, while many Chinese people in different geographical areas of the country may not understand each other when they speak their regional dialect, they may share the same written language. Even if their pronunciation of different characters within that language may vary. This is even true across locations as distinct as Taiwan and Hong Kong, for example. Both share, with some important differences, Traditional Chinese characters as their written script. But in Taiwan, Mandarin is spoken. In Hong Kong, most people speak Cantonese. |
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