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There are several hundred languages in China. The predominant language is Standard Chinese, which is based on Beijingese, but there are hundreds of related Chinese languages, collectively known as Hanyu (simplified Chinese: 汉语; traditional Chinese: 漢語; pinyin: Hànyǔ, 'Han language'), that are spoken by 92% of the population. The Chinese (or 'Sinitic') languages are typically divided into seven major language groups, and their study is a distinct academic discipline.[1] They differ as much from each other morphologically and phonetically as do English, German and Danish, but meanwhile share the same writing system (Hanzi) and are mutually intelligible in written form. There are in addition approximately 300 minority languages spoken by the remaining 8% of the population of China.[2] The ones with greatest state support are Mongolian, Tibetan, Uyghur and Zhuang.
According to the 2010 edition of Nationalencyklopedin, 955 million out of China's then-population of 1.34 billion spoke some variety of Mandarin Chinese as their first language, accounting for 71% of the country's population.[3] According to the 2019 edition of Ethnologue, 904 million people in China spoke some variety of Mandarin as their first language in 2017.[4]
Standard Chinese, known in China as Putonghua, based on the Mandarin dialect of Beijing,[5] is the official national spoken language for the mainland and serves as a lingua franca within the Mandarin-speaking regions (and, to a lesser extent, across the other regions of mainland China). Several other autonomous regions have additional official languages. For example, Tibetan has official status within the Tibet Autonomous Region and Mongolian has official status within Inner Mongolia. Language laws of China do not apply to either Hong Kong or Macau, which have different official languages (Cantonese, English and Portuguese) from the mainland.
^Dwyer, Arienne (2005). The Xinjiang Conflict: Uyghur Identity, Language Policy, and Political Discourse(PDF). Political Studies 15. Washington, D.C.: East-West Center Washington. pp. 31–32. ISBN 1-932728-29-5. Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 July 2007. Tertiary institutions with instruction in the languages and literatures of the regional minorities (e.g., Xinjiang University) have faculties entitled Hanyu xi ("Languages of China Department") and Hanyu wenxue xi ("Literatures of the Languages of China Department").
^Lewis, M. Paul, ed. (2009). "Languages of China". Ethnologue: Languages of the World (16th ed.). Dallas, Texas: SIL International. The number of individual languages listed for China is 299.
^Mikael Parkvall, "Världens 100 största språk 2007" (The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2007), in Nationalencyklopedin. Asterisks mark the 2010 estimates for the top dozen languages.
^Eberhard, David M.; Simons, Gary F.; Fennig, Charles D., eds. (2019). "China: Languages". Ethnologue: Languages of the World (22nd ed.). Dallas, Texas: SIL International.
^Barnes, Dayle (1978). "The Language of Instruction in Chinese Communities". International Review of Education. 24 (3): 371–374. Bibcode:1978IREdu..24..371B. doi:10.1007/BF00598052. JSTOR 3443833. S2CID 144750671.
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