On the population of Chinese is the language of the world’s largest, with more than a billion population speaks Chinese as their mother tongue: this includes 20 million in Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand, 5 million, 5 million, 5 million in Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, 2 million, 1 million, one million in Vietnam and other｡ Chinese, when the United Nations, founded in 1945, one of the five working languages (1974 has added Arabic)｡
There are seven major Chinese dialects: the northern dialect about three-quarters of the total population, the coverage area including China, Northeast, Northwest, North China, Shandong, Henan, Hubei and Anhui, Jiangsu, Sichuan, part of the Yangtze River north of the Yunnan and Guizhou Han Chinese neighborhood in the northern dialect and there are some “islands” in Fujian, Guangxi and Hainan; Wu dialect, which prevailed in the south part of the Yangtze River in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai, a population of 70 million, is the second largest dialect; Cantonese dialect, which occurs mainly in Guangdong, Guangxi and overseas Chinese, the middle, about 60 million people; Fujian dialect, prevailed in Fujian, Taiwan, and Southeast Asian countries, about 60 million people, the situation is very complex, to the degree of mutual non-passage may be Chinese in the Qin and Han times southward invasion with local languages and interactive results; Hunan dialect prevailed in Hunan Province; Gan dialect prevailing in Jiangxi Province, the characteristics of these two dialects are not prominent, and by the surrounding dialects a greater impact; also Hakka, mainly distributed in Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian and Taiwan｡ these “dialects” is often a big difference between - such as Guangzhou, Beijing People who listen to his speech, and never listen to the French than the British speech easy people of Taiwan to listen to words of Shaanxi Province will hear very confused｡ What are the reasons these dialects were all linguistics is still classified as a language? In addition to long-term unity of the national culture and national unity and reunification of these factors, there are One important reason is that language - Chinese｡
Leo Peng