Chinese today — Mandarin, dialects, and two character sets
One writing system, many spoken languages
“Chinese” is not one spoken language. It is a family, and the varieties are as different from each other as French is from Spanish.
| VARIETY | WHERE | SPEAKERS |
|---|---|---|
| Mandarin 普通话 | Mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore — the national standard | ~900 million |
| Cantonese 粤语 | Guangdong, Hong Kong, Macau, diaspora | ~85 million |
| Wu 吴语 (incl. Shanghainese) | Shanghai, Zhejiang | ~80 million |
| Min 闽语 (incl. Hokkien) | Fujian, Taiwan, Southeast Asia | ~75 million |
They share a written language, which is why a Cantonese speaker and a Mandarin speaker who cannot converse can read the same newspaper. This course teaches Mandarin, the standard taught in schools and used in broadcasting across China, Taiwan, and Singapore.
Simplified and traditional characters
| SET | USED IN | EXAMPLE |
|---|---|---|
| Simplified 简体 | Mainland China, Singapore, Malaysia | 学 · 门 · 车 |
| Traditional 繁體 | Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau | 學 · 門 · 車 |
Simplified characters were introduced in the 1950s to raise literacy. Most characters are identical in both sets; a few hundred common ones differ.
This course teaches simplified characters, which cover the largest number of speakers and the mainland. A learner who knows simplified can usually guess traditional forms in context, and the reverse is easier still.
What is genuinely hard, and what is not
| HARD | NOT HARD |
|---|---|
| Tones — four of them, and they change meaning | Grammar — no conjugation, no tense, no plurals, no gender |
| Characters — thousands, learned individually | Word order — mostly subject-verb-object, like English |
| Listening — many words sound similar | Vocabulary building — compounds are often transparent |
A worked example of that last point: 电 diàn is electric. 电话 diànhuà is “electric speech” — telephone. 电脑 diànnǎo is “electric brain” — computer. 电影 diànyǐng is “electric shadow” — film. Once you know a few hundred characters, new words often explain themselves.