Chinese morphology

Chinese
汉语/漢語 Hànyǔ or 中文 Zhōngwén
Hànyǔ (Chinese) written in traditional (top), simplified (middle) characters and alternative name (bottom)
Native to	People's Republic of China, Republic of China (Taiwan), Singapore
Ethnicity	Han Chinese
Native speakers	1.2 billion (2004)
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Sinitic Chinese
Early forms	Old Chinese Middle Chinese
Standard forms	Standard Mandarin Standard Cantonese
Dialects	Mandarin Jin Wu Gan Xiang Min Hakka Yue Ping Huizhou
Writing system	Simplified Chinese Traditional Chinese Transcriptions: Zhuyin Pinyin (Latin) Xiao'erjing (Arabic) Dungan (Cyrillic) 'Phags-pa script (Historical)
Official status
Official language in	Mandarin:  Mainland China  Singapore  Taiwan Cantonese:  Hong Kong  Macau Hakka:  Taiwan
Regulated by	National Commission on Language and Script Work (Mainland China) National Languages Committee (Taiwan) Civil Service Bureau (Hong Kong) Promote Mandarin Council (Singapore) Chinese Language Standardisation Council (Malaysia)
Language codes
ISO 639-1	zh
ISO 639-2	chi (B) zho (T)
ISO 639-3	– inclusive code Individual codes:  – Min Dong  – Jinyu  – Mandarin  – Pu Xian  – Huizhou  – Min Zhong  – Gan  – Hakka  – Xiang  – Min Bei  – Min Nan  – Wu  – Yue  – Old Chinese  – Late Middle Chinese  – Classical Chinese
Glottolog	sini1245
Linguasphere	79-AAA
Map of the Sinophone world Legend:   Countries identified Chinese as a primary, administrative, or native language   Countries with more than 5,000,000 Chinese speakers   Countries with more than 1,000,000 Chinese speakers   Countries with more than 500,000 Chinese speakers   Countries with more than 100,000 Chinese speakers   Major Chinese-speaking settlements
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Legend:

Chinese (simplified Chinese: 汉语; traditional Chinese: 漢語; pinyin: Hànyǔ; literally: "Han language"; or Chinese: 中文; pinyin: Zhōngwén; literally: "Chinese writing") is a group of related, but in many cases mutually unintelligible, language varieties, forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Chinese is spoken by the Han majority and many minority ethnic groups in China. About 1.2 billion people (around 16% of the world's population) speak some form of Chinese as their first language.

The varieties of Chinese are usually described by native speakers as dialects of a single Chinese language, but linguists note that they are as diverse as a language family. The internal diversity of Chinese has been likened to that of the Romance languages, but may be even more varied. There are between 7 and 13 main regional groups of Chinese (depending on classification scheme), of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin (about 960 million, e.g. Southwestern Mandarin), followed by Wu (80 million, e.g. Shanghainese), Min (70 million, e.g. Southern Min), Yue (60 million, e.g. Cantonese), etc. Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible, and even dialect groups within Min Chinese may not be mutually intelligible. Some, however, like Xiang and certain Southwest Mandarin dialects, may share common terms and a certain degree of intelligibility. All varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic.