List of varieties of Chinese

The following is a list of Chinese languages and dialects, many of which are mutually unintelligible.

Linguists classify these varieties as the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Within this broad classification, there are between seven and fourteen subgroups, depending on the classification.

The traditional Chinese classification lists seven groups, comprising:

(shown here with the romanized Standard Chinese names of the categories, ordered alphabetically).

James Matisoff's classification is as follows:

Matisoff's list uses the common English names of the groups, ordered by decreasing number of speakers of languages within the group.

In addition to the varieties listed below, it is customary to speak informally of dialects of each province (such as Sichuan dialect and Hainan dialect). These designations do not generally correspond to classifications used by linguists, but each nevertheless has characteristics of its own.

Sometimes subcategory of Wu.

Sometimes a subcategory of Mandarin.

The non-Min dialects of Hainan were once considered Yue, but are now left unclassified:

In addition to the varieties within the Sinitic branch of Sino-Tibetan, a number of mixed languages also exist that comprise elements of one or more Chinese varieties with other languages.

The extensive 1987 Language Atlas of China groups Chinese topolects (geographical varieties) as follows. Units are:

In the list below, local dialects are not listed. Groups are in bold, subgroups are numbered, and clusters are bulleted.

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