Draft:Outline of the Chinese language

See also: Index of the Chinese language

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Chinese:

Chinese (simplified Chinese: 汉语; traditional Chinese: 漢語; pinyin: Hànyǔ; lit. 'Han language' or 中文; Zhōngwén; 'Chinese writing') is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in China. Approximately 1.35 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak a variety of Chinese as their first language.

What type of thing is Chinese?

Chinese can be described as all of the following:

• Chinese language – as a holistic linguistic entity with wide variation
• the Sinitic languages – a large language family with many mutually unintelligible varieties
  • Standard Chinese
• Chinese characters

Varieties of Chinese

Varieties of Chinese

• Mandarin Chinese
• Jin Chinese
• Wu Chinese
• Gan Chinese
• Xiang Chinese
• Min Chinese
• Hakka Chinese
• Yue Chinese
• Pinghua
• Huizhou Chinese
• Standard Chinese
• Standard Cantonese

History of the Chinese language

• History of the Chinese language