Chinese language
Phonology
Spoken Chinese is distinguished by its high level of internal diversity, though all spoken varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic. There are between six and twelve main regional groups of Chinese, of which the most populous) is Mandarin, followed by Wu, Min, Xiang, Gan, Cantonese and Hakka. Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible, though some, like Xiang and the Southwest Mandarin dialects, may share common terms and some degree of intelligibility.
The standardized form of spoken Chinese is Standard Mandarin (Putonghua/ Guoyu), based on the Beijing dialect. It is the official language of the People's Republic of China, as well as one of four official languages of Singapore. Of the other varieties, Standard Cantonese is common and influential in Cantonese-speaking overseas communities, and remains one of the official languages of Hong Kong and of Macau. Min Nan, part of the Min language group, is widely spoken in southern Fujian, in neighbouring Taiwan and in Southeast Asia>.
All varieties of spoken Chinese use tones. Generally, the standard Mandarin has four tones and it has experienced a dramatic decrease in sounds as well as has far more multi-syllabic words accordingly. The phonological structure of each syllable consists of a nucleus including a vowel (which can be a monophthong, diphthong, or even a triphthong in certain varieties) with an optional onset or codaconsonant as well as a tone. In an attempt to make the Chinese language more understandable to the western world, China developed the "pinyin" (pin-yin) system. The pinyin system uses the western alphabet and spelling to pronounce Chinese words. Chinese languages have been transliterated into the pinyin system since 1892.
