III.

Language Versus Dialects

Spoken Chinese comprises many regional variants, called dialects. Although they employ a common written form, they are mutually unintelligible, and for this reason controversy exists over whether they can legitimately be called dialects or whether they should be classified as separate languages. The differences among them are analogous to the differences in pronunciation and vocabulary among the Romance languages. Generally, however, the variants of Chinese are referred to as dialects. Most Chinese speak one of the Mandarin dialects, which are largely mutually intelligible. The dialect spoken in Beijing constitutes the base for standard Mandarin dialect. It forms the basis both of the modern written vernacular, Baihua, which supplanted classical Chinese in the schools after 1917, and of the official spoken language, Putonghua, prescribed in 1956 for nationwide use in schools.

Chinese also has six other dialect groups, all spoken in China's southeastern provinces. The Yue dialects, also called Cantonese, are spoken in Hong Kong, most of Guangdong, southern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, parts of Hainan, and in many overseas settlements. Most of the inhabitants of Hunan use the Xiang dialects, also known as Hunanese. The Min dialects are spoken in most of Fujian, large areas of Taiwan and Hainan, parts of eastern Guangdong and the Leizhou Peninsula, and in areas of Southeast Asia. Most of the people living in Jiangxi and the southeastern corner of Hubei use the Gan dialects. The majority of the inhabitants of Zhejiang, as well as people living in southern areas of Jiangsu and Anhui, speak the Wu dialects. Some Wu speakers share marginal mutual intelligibility with Mandarin and Gan speakers. The Kejia, or Hakka, dialects are spoken in northeastern Guangdong, southern Jiangxi, southwestern Fujian, and in pockets throughout southeastern China and Southeast Asia.