The following is a list of countries and territories where Chinese is an official language . While those countries or territories that designate any variety of Chinese as an official language, as the term "Chinese" is considered a group of related language varieties rather than a homogeneous language, of which many are not mutually intelligible, in the context of the spoken language such designations are usually understood as one standard form of Chinese variety, namely Cantonese and Standard Mandarin. [1] In the context of the written language, written modern standard Chinese is usually understood to be the official standard, though different territories use different standard scripts, namely traditional characters and simplified characters.
Today, Chinese has an official language status in three countries and two territories. In China, it is the sole official language as Standard Chinese; in Taiwan, it is the de facto official language; while in Singapore (as Mandarin) it is one of the four official languages. In Hong Kong and Macau it is co-official as Cantonese, alongside English and Portuguese respectively. Chinese is also an official language in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and also one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Chinese was added as an official language in the United Nations in 1973, when the General Assembly made Chinese a working language. [2] [3]
Location | Population (2017) [4] | Written variety | Standardised form |
---|---|---|---|
![]() | 7,191,503 | Traditional Chinese | N/A (Not mentioned by the government) |
![]() | 648,550 | Traditional Chinese |
As special administrative regions of China, both Hong Kong and Macau list the ambiguous "Chinese" as one of their official languages, although in practice, the regionally spoken Cantonese dialect is used by the government as the official variant of Chinese rather than Mandarin as on the mainland.
Cantonese is also highly influential in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, where the language originated. Despite Mandarin's status as the official language of China, the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT) has allowed local television and other media in Guangdong Province to be broadcast in Cantonese since 1988 in order to countermeasure against Hong Kong influence. Meanwhile, usage of the country's other dialects in media is rigorously restricted by the SARFT, with permission from national or local authorities being required for a dialect to be the primary programming language at radio and television stations. [9] Despite its unique standing relative to other Chinese dialects, Cantonese has also been targeted by the SARFT in attempts to curb its usage on local television in Guangdong. This was most exemplified by mass demonstrations in 2010 that resulted in the eventual rejection of the plans.
Location | Population (2017) [4] | Written variety | Standardised form |
---|---|---|---|
![]() | 1,379,302,771 | Simplified Chinese Written Mandarin | Standard Chinese |
![]() | 23,508,428 | Traditional Chinese Written Mandarin | Standard Chinese Taiwanese Mandarin |
![]() | 5,888,926 (~3,000,000 ethnic Chinese) | Simplified Chinese Traditional Chinese Written Mandarin | Singaporean Mandarin |
The Mandarin dialect group consists of closely related varieties of Chinese spoken natively across most of northern and southwestern China, a form based on the Beijing dialect has been established as the national standard and is official in the People's Republic of China [12] and Singapore. [13]
Despite there is no de jure official languages in Taiwan (Republic of China), Taiwanese Mandarin is the de facto language for official use. Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Education designated Taiwanese Mandarin, Taiwanese Hokkien, Taiwanese Hakka, and Matsu dialect as its provisional "National Languages" in 2019. [14] [15]
In Wa State, Mandarin Chinese is de facto the official language, even though the government tries to promote the use of Wa. This situation arose because Wa lacks an agreed standardisation (the dialects are very different and three different scripts are used for the language) and because of the significant presence of non-Wa minorities. Consequently, Chinese is used in the government, army, and business, and is taught in many schools. [16]
In China, the public usage of varieties other than Standard Mandarin (Putonghua) is officially discouraged by the government and nearly all education and media is conducted in the standard variant, with a notable exception being Cantonese in Guangdong media and public transportation. As a result, younger populations are increasingly losing knowledge of their local dialects. While there was limited activity in reintroducing local languages at schools through cultural programs and a slight uplifting of broadcasting restrictions on dialects during the 2000s, the Chinese government has stopped and in most cases, reversed these developments since the mid-2010s. [17]
Although Mandarin is the official variant of Chinese in Taiwan, Taiwanese Hokkien and Hakka are widely spoken and used in media. Additionally, they are taught at the primary school level and are used in public transportation announcements. [18] A thriving literary scene for both Taiwanese and Hakka also exists alongside Mandarin. In December 2017, Hakka was recognised as a national minority language, allowing it to be used for official purposes in townships where speakers form at least half of the population. [19] Taiwanese was also granted national language status after a legislative act in 2018. [20]
In Singapore, the public usage of varieties other than Standard Mandarin is discouraged as in China. The Singaporean government has actively promoted the Speak Mandarin Campaign (SMC) since the 1980s and forbids non-cable broadcasting and Chinese language medium of instruction in non-Mandarin varieties. However, since the mid-1990s, there has been a relaxation in allowing non-Mandarin broadcasting via cable networks and a massive following of Hong Kong television dramas and pop culture, which are in Cantonese.
Chinese is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in China. Approximately 1.35 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak a variety of Chinese as their first language.
Mandarin is a group of Chinese language dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language of China. Because Mandarin originated in North China and most Mandarin dialects are found in the north, the group is sometimes referred to as Northern Chinese. Many varieties of Mandarin, such as those of the Southwest and the Lower Yangtze, are not mutually intelligible with the standard language. Nevertheless, Mandarin as a group is often placed first in lists of languages by number of native speakers.
Standard Chinese is a modern standard form of Mandarin Chinese that was first codified during the republican era (1912‒1949). It is designated as the official language of mainland China and a major language in the United Nations, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is largely based on the Beijing dialect. Standard Chinese is a pluricentric language with local standards in mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore that mainly differ in their lexicon. Hong Kong written Chinese, used for formal written communication in Hong Kong and Macau, is a form of Standard Chinese that is read aloud with the Cantonese reading of characters.
Hakka forms a language group of varieties of Chinese, spoken natively by the Hakka people in parts of Southern China, Taiwan, some diaspora areas of Southeast Asia and in overseas Chinese communities around the world.
Yue is a branch of the Sinitic languages primarily spoken in Southern China, particularly in the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi.
There are hundreds of local Chinese language varieties forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast part of mainland China. The varieties are typically classified into several groups: Mandarin, Wu, Min, Xiang, Gan, Jin, Hakka and Yue, though some varieties remain unclassified. These groups are neither clades nor individual languages defined by mutual intelligibility, but reflect common phonological developments from Middle Chinese.
A regional language is a language spoken in a region of a sovereign state, whether it be a small area, a federated state or province or some wider area.
Cantonese is the traditional prestige variety of Yue Chinese, a Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou and its surrounding Pearl River Delta, with over 82.4 million native speakers.
The Hoklo people are a Han Chinese subgroup who speak Hokkien, a Southern Min language, or trace their ancestry to southeastern Fujian in China, and known by various related terms such as Banlam people, Minnan people, or more commonly in Southeast Asia as the Hokkien people. The Hokkien people are found in significant numbers in mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Brunei, Myanmar, the United States, Hong Kong, and Macau. The Hokkien people have a distinct culture and architecture, including Hokkien shrines and temples with tilted sharp eaves, high and slanted top roofs, and finely detailed decorative inlays of wood and porcelain. The Hokkien language, which includes Taiwanese Hokkien, is the mainstream Southern Min, which is partially mutually intelligible to the Teochew language, Hainanese, Leizhou Min, and Haklau Min.
The Han Chinese people can be defined into subgroups based on linguistic, cultural, ethnic, genetic, and regional features. The terminology used in Mandarin to describe the groups is: "minxi", used in mainland China or "zuqun", used in Taiwan. No Han subgroup is recognized as one of People's Republic of China's 56 official ethnic groups, in Taiwan only three subgroups, Hoklo, Hakka and Waishengren are recognized.
Punti is a Cantonese endonym referring to the native Cantonese people of Guangdong and Guangxi. Punti designates Weitou dialect-speaking locals in contrast to other Yue Chinese speakers and others such as Taishanese people, Hoklo people, Hakka people, and ethnic minorities such as the Zhuang people of Guangxi and the boat-dwelling Tanka people, who are both descendants of the Baiyue – although the Tanka have largely assimilated into Han Chinese culture.
The Cantonese people or Yue people, are a Han Chinese subgroup originating from or residing in the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi, in southern mainland China. In a strict sense, "Cantonese" refers only to people with roots from Guangzhou and its satellite cities and towns, rather than generally referring to the people of the Liangguang region.
During the British colonial era, English was the sole official language until 1978. Today, the Basic Law of Hong Kong states that English and Chinese are the two official languages of Hong Kong. All roads and government signs are bilingual, and both languages are used in academia, business and the courts, as well as in most government materials today.
The languages of Taiwan consist of several varieties of languages under the families of Austronesian languages and Sino-Tibetan languages. The Formosan languages, a geographically designated branch of Austronesian languages, have been spoken by the Taiwanese indigenous peoples for thousands of years. Owing to the wide internal variety of the Formosan languages, research on historical linguistics recognizes Taiwan as the Urheimat (homeland) of the whole Austronesian languages family. In the last 400 years, several waves of Han emigrations brought several different Sinitic languages into Taiwan. These languages include Taiwanese Hokkien, Hakka, and Mandarin, which have become the major languages spoken in present-day Taiwan.
Hong Kong Cantonese is a dialect of the Cantonese language of the Sino-Tibetan family.
The Cantonese Wikipedia is the Cantonese-language edition of Wikipedia, run by the Wikimedia Foundation. It was started on 25 March 2006.
Singaporean Mandarin is a variety of Mandarin Chinese spoken natively in Singapore. Mandarin is one of the four official languages of Singapore along with English, Malay and Tamil.
In July 2010, the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) Guangzhou Committee, in a written proposal to mayor of Guangzhou Wan Qingliang, suggested increasing Mandarin programming on Guangzhou Television's main and news channels. The proposal sparked widespread controversy, met with fierce criticism in native Cantonese-speaking cities including Guangzhou and Hong Kong, which eventually triggered a mass protest in the former city. In a formal response, Guangzhou TV rejected the proposal, citing "historic causes and present demands" as reasons for Cantonese-Mandarin bilingualism.
The usage of Chinese by the Chinese diaspora and their descendants has been determined by a large number of factors, including their ancestry, their migrant ancestors' "regime of origin", assimilation through generational changes, and official policies of their country of residence. The general trend is that more established Chinese populations in the Western world and in many regions of Asia have Cantonese as either the dominant variety or as a common community vernacular, while Mandarin is much more prevalent among new arrivals, making it increasingly common in many Chinatowns, though still not dominant.
Protection of the varieties of Chinese refers to efforts to protect the continued existence of the varieties of Chinese in mainland China and other Sinophone regions, amid pressure to abandon their use, usually in favor of Standard Chinese. The Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China has proclaimed to be taking active measures to protect ten varieties of Chinese. However, a large majority of the citizens of China speak a dialect of Mandarin Chinese, a standardized form of which has been enforced and promoted by the government of China for the last sixty years. The Constitution of the People's Republic of China calls on the government to promote Standard Chinese as the common tongue of the nation, but this policy has caused conflict to a certain extent with plans to preserve local varieties of Chinese. Education and media programming in varieties of Chinese other than Mandarin have been discouraged by the governments of the People's Republic of China, Singapore, and Taiwan. Teaching the varieties of Chinese to non-native speakers is discouraged by the laws of the People's Republic of China in favor of Putonghua. The Guangdong National Language Regulations were passed by the Guangdong provincial government in 2012 to promote the use of Standard Chinese in broadcast and print media at the expense of the local standard Cantonese and other related dialects. It has been labelled "pro-Mandarin, anti-Yue" legislation.
English and Chinese were established as both the official languages of Hong Kong for the purposes of communication between the Government and the general public
A língua chinesa tem em Macau estatuto oficial e a mesma força legal que a língua portuguesa.