Chinese language
Beijing's native tongue
Chinese is the language spoken in China and by Chinese communities worldwide, encompassing several related but mutually unintelligible varieties—Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu, and others.
Mandarin, the official language of China, is the world's most spoken native language.
Chinese is written with characters representing words or morphemes rather than sounds: She's studying Chinese.
The term often refers specifically to Mandarin unless otherwise specified.
- pinyinChinese-to-alphabet conversion system
- tonesDistinct sound qualities
- simplified charactersReduced-stroke Chinese script
- traditional charactersOriginal Chinese writing forms
- strokesGentle touches, swimming styles
tonal · logographic · dialects · Shanghainese · Taiwanese · radicals · jade · bamboo · dynasty · scroll · ancient · tea · red envelope · dim sum · fortune cookie · Beijing · calligraphy · Fujian
- CJK LanguagesJapanese, Korean, Mandarin, hanzi, kanji
- universitiesuniversities, Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge
- ChinatownChinatown, dim sum, dragon dances, lion dances, lanterns
- Asian historyempresses, shoguns, Laozi, East Asia, Mencius
- overseas ChineseChinatown, Chinatowns, benevolent society, benevolent societies, tong
Chinese languageEnglish
Britain's native tongue
Russian · European languages · Latin · German · Sanskrit
Chinese languageEnglish
Britain's native tongue
Western · global English · lingua franca · French · Spanish