Chinese Translation Services
Language Name: Chinese
Other Names of Chinese: Standard Chinese (Putonghua/Guoyu/Huayu) is a standardized form of spoken Chinese, based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin Chinese.
Chinese Language Varieties: Mandarin, Jin, Huizhou, Wu, Gan, Hunanese, Jiangxinese, Hakka, Yue (including Cantonese-Taishanese), Pinghua, Shaojiang, Northern Min, Eastern Min (including Fuchow), Central Min, Pu Xian, Southern Min (including Amoy, Taiwanese), Teochew (including Swatow, Chaozhou, Jieyang,part of Shanwei/Meizhou)
Written Script of Chinese: Chinese characters, zhuyin fuhao, pinyin, Xiao’erjing
Chinese is an Official Language in: People’s Republic of China (Hong Kong, Macau), Republic of China (Taiwan), Singapore
Chinese is spoken in: People’s Republic of China (China), Republic of China (Taiwan), Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Australia, Indonesia, Mauritius, Peru
Chinese Number of Speakers: Over one billion (1.3) people speaks some variety of Chinese as their native language
Chinese ISO Code: zh, chi, zho
Notes:
- Chinese is a language family consisting of languages which are mostly mutually unintelligible to varying degrees.
- There are between seven and thirteen main regional groups of Chinese, of which the most spoken, by far, is Mandarin (about 850 million), followed by Wu (90 million), Cantonese (Yue) (70 million) and Min (50 million). Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible.
- Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese:
There are currently two systems for Chinese characters (writing Chinese): The traditional system (Traditional Chinese), still used in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau. The Simplified Chinese character system, developed by the People’s Republic of China in 1954 to promote mass literacy, simplifies most complex traditional glyphs to fewer strokes.
