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Different Chinese Dialects – View Chinese Dialects Map and List

Chinese Dialects Map
Chinese Dialects Map

Within any language or language group there may be significant changes in speech, vocabulary, and pronunciation. The term used to describe these changes is called a dialect. Some words or phrases that exist in one dialect may exist or be absent from different dialect. The most common Chinese dialects is Mandarin Chinese. Mandarin Chinese is the most understood of the Chinese Dialects with nearly a billion speakers worldwide.

How many chinese dialects? 10

List of Chinese Dialects

  • Mandarin Chinese – Official Dialect of the Republic of China and makes up the largest Dialect of spoken Chinese in northern to southwestern China.
  • Gan Chinese – A dialect closely related to the Hakka dialect.
  • Jin Chinese Spoken in parts of Shaanxi, Hebei, Henan, and inner Mongolia. This dialect is sometimes classified as a dialect of Mandarin.
  • Xiang Chinese – Spoken mainly in Hunan. Heavy influenced from Mandarin.
  • Hakka Chinese – Spoken by a cultural group of people descended from the song-era refugees from North China.
  • Wu Chinese – Spoken in the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and the municipality of Shanghai.
  • Hui Chinese – Spoken in the southern parts of Anhui. Used to be considered a sub-dialect of Wu, now is it’s own dialect.
  • Ping Chinese – Spoken in parts of the Guangxi. Sometimes classed as dialect of Cantonese.
  • Yue Chinese – Spoken in Guangdong, Guangxi, Hong Kong, Macau, parts of Southeast Asia
  • Min Chinese – Spoken in Fujian, Taiwan, parts of Southeast Asia particularly Malaysia, Philippines, and Singapore. Has seven subgroups.

Different Chinese Dialects of the Chinese language are spoken in many different nations and regions around the world, most commonly throughout northern Asia. However, the differences in regional Chinese dialects may not make one Chinese speaker nearly incomprehensible to another. In most cases, the different Chinese dialects don’t have a specific written form of the language, but there’s usually a certain amount of literature that accompanies each Chinese dialects.

Interested in further study into Chinese or confused on where to start? I recommend reading our Chinese Beginners Guide 

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About Sally Morgan

My name is Sally Morgan, I'm American and currently a Language Teacher in New York State Schools for French and Spanish. I have studied Foreign Languages, translation and teaching at the Columbia University in New York. I lived for 3 years in Europe including France, UK and Italy.

I am a passionate linguist and love how speaking another language opens the doors of communication and therefore a whole world.

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