Chinese dialect

Linguists classify the variations in spoken Chinese language into seven (sometimes ten) groups, often called dialects. Within these groups, there are many subgroups, many of which are mutually unintelligible.

There are also great differences in the geographical variation of intelligibility. Mandarin dialects are remarkably constant with people living hundreds of kilometers from each other able to communicate intelligibly. In Fujian, people living ten kilometers away from each other can be speaking unintelligible variations of Min.

Mandarin 北方話/北方话: This is the mother dialect of Chinese living in northern and southwestern China. It is the basis for the official spoken language of Chinese which is called 普通話/普通话 Putonghua in the People's Republic of China and 國語/国语 Guoyu in the Republic of China (Taiwan).

One distinctive feature of Mandarin is the partial loss of tones in comparison to Middle Chinese and the other dialects. Another is the loss of consonants on the ends of syllables, so that while Middle Chinese had an inventory of "-p, -t, -k, -m, -n, ng", Mandarin only has "-n, -ng". In addition, Mandarin underwent less tone splits than the other dialects. As a result, many words which sound different in dialects such as Cantonese are homophones in Mandarin. Mandarin has adjusted by developing compound words in order to make up for the development of homophones. This is less common in other dialects.

Wu 吳語/吴语: spoken in the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Wu includes Shanghainese. Wu dialect is notable among Chinese dialects in having kept voiced consonants, such as /b/, /d/, /g/, /z/, /v/, etc. (These may in fact be better described as voiceless consonants that create a voiced breathy element across the syllable: i.e. /p\\/, /t\\/, etc.)
Hakka/Kejia 客家話/客家话: spoken by the Hakka people in Southern China. Despite being a southern dialect, Hakka was the result of northern immigration. The term "Hakka" itself translates as "guest families". Hence Hakka is has kept many features of northern Middle Chinese that have been lost in the North.
Min 閩語/闽语: spoken in Fujian, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Southeast Asia. Min is the only group of Chinese dialects that cannot be directly derived from Middle Chinese. Due to its great internal disparity, Min can be divided into five groups of dialects: south Min (which includes) Hokkien, Teochew (Chaozhou), and Taiwanese), east Min, Putian-Xianyou, north Min and central Min.
Cantonese 粵語/粤语: spoken in Guangdong province, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, all over Southeast Asia and by Overseas Chinese. Cantonese is spoken in Hong Kong; the language of Taishan is also classified as Cantonese. Cantonese has the most intricate tone pattern among all Chinese dialects - with varieties having up to nine or ten tones. It is also the only dialect to have kept the full complement of ancient Chinese word-final consonants (p, t, k, m, n, ng)
Xiang 湘語/湘语: spoken in Hunan province. Xiang is usually divided into the "old" and "new" types, with the new type being significantly closer to Mandarin.
Gan 贛語/赣语: spoken in Jiangxi province.

(The following three dialect groups are not always classified separately.)

Hui 徽語/徽语: spoken in the southern parts of Anhui province - usually classified as a sub-branch of Gan.
Jin 晉語/晋语: spoken in Shanxi province, as well as parts of Shaanxi, Hebei, Henan, and Inner Mongolia. It is often classified together with Mandarin.
Pinghua 平話/平话: spoken in parts of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. It is sometimes classified together with Cantonese.

Table of contents

1 Sociolinguistics of spoken variations of Chinese
2 Manifestations of language differentiation
3 Related topics

Sociolinguistics of spoken variations of Chinese

In general, Chinese in southern China are fluent speakers of both Mandarin and the local dialect, but use a different variation based on the social situation. Mandarin is usually considered more formal and is required when speaking to a person who does not understand the local dialect. The local dialect is generally considered more intimate and is used among close family members and friends and in everyday conversation within the local area. Chinese speakers will frequently code switch between Mandarin and the local dialect. Parents will generally speak to their children in dialect, and the relationship between dialect and Mandarin appears to be stable.

Knowing the local dialect is of considerable social benefit and most Chinese who permanently move to a new area will attempt to pick up the local dialect. Learning a new dialect is usually done informally through a process of immersion and recognizing sound shifts. Typically, a speaker of one dialect of Chinese will need about a year of immersion to understand the local dialect and about three to five years to become fluent in speaking it. Because of the variety of dialects spoken, there are usually few formal methods for learning a local dialect.

Within the People's Republic of China there has been a strong official policy of not discouraging the use of local dialect or to imply that local dialect is inferior. On the other hand, in the Republic of China, the government had a policy until the mid-1980s of promoting Mandarin as high status and the local languages -- Taiwanese and Hakka -- as low status, a situation which caused a great deal of resentment and has produced somewhat of a backlash in the 1990s as part of the Taiwanese localization movement.

Manifestations of language differentiation

Although most people speak of Chinese as though it were one language with perhaps some differences in "accent" or "dialect" as one moves from area to area of the country, in fact the differences are in some cases quite stark. For instance, in the dialect of Min language spoken in Taiwan, to express the idea that one is feeling a little ill, one might say:

ngwa\\ ga- gi_ lang/ uu- zam^ bwa/ mm_ hou\\.
Which in Mandarin would be something like:
wo^ jia- ji^ ren/ you^ yi` dian^ bu` hao^.
A little more colloquially it would be:
wo^ zi` ji^ you^ yi` dian^ bu` shu-fu.
A little better would be:
wo^ you^ yi` dian^ bu` shu-fu.
And perhaps some people would really say:
wo^ you^ yi` diar^ bu` shu-fu.