Phrasebook

The Chinese language

The Chinese language has the most speakers worldwide. However, there is not one individual Chinese language. Several Chinese languages exist. They all belong to the family of Sino-Tibetan languages. A total of approximately 1.3 billion people speak Chinese. The majority of those people live in the People's Republic of China and in Taiwan. There are many countries with Chinese-speaking minorities. The largest Chinese language is High Chinese. This standardized high-level language is also called Mandarin. Mandarin is the official language of the People's Republic of China. Other Chinese languages are often only referred to as dialects. Mandarin is also spoken in Taiwan and Singapore. Mandarin is the native language of 850 million people. It is understood by almost all Chinese-speaking people, however. For this reason, speakers of different dialects use it for communication. All Chinese people use a common written form. The Chinese written form is 4,000 to 5,000 years old. With that, Chinese has the longest literary tradition. Other Asian cultures have borrowed the Chinese written form as well. Chinese characters are more difficult than alphabetic systems. Spoken Chinese, however, is not as complicated. The grammar can be learned relatively easily. Therefore, learners can make good progress pretty quickly. And more and more people want to learn Chinese! As a foreign language, it is becoming increasingly meaningful. By now, Chinese languages are offered everywhere. Have the courage to learn it yourself! Chinese will be the language of the future…