• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
Zippy Facts Logo

Zippy Facts

Interesting Random Facts

  • Animals
  • Culture
  • Firsts
  • Food
  • Geography
  • Health
  • History
  • Inventions
  • Language
  • Mythology
  • Odds
  • People
  • Religion
  • Science
  • Space
  • Universe
  • World
You are here: Home / History / Why are there more than two different spoken Chinese languages in China but only one written one?

Why are there more than two different spoken Chinese languages in China but only one written one?

February 9, 2020 by Karen Hill

There are more than two different spoken Chinese dialects in China.

Most villages and towns throughout China developed their own style of pronunciation and ways of communicating.

Therefore, there are several general areas of dialects, and depending on how you want to categorize them, hundreds of variations on these. Some of the main ones include Mandarin, Jin, Cantonese, Gan, Xiang, Min, Hakim, and Wu.

But thankfully, there is but one written language, making it possible for any literate Chinese to communicate with any other literate Chinese despite existing language barriers.

The reason the written form has remained is primarily because it isn’t a phonetic written language, like most other languages, but a pictorial language. Each character in the Chinese written language is a picture, and each picture represents a word.

In theory, that word can be pronounced any way you would like; the picture will always mean the same thing.

Although the written language has been simplified and streamlined over the years, it has remained largely unchanged and continues to offer a communication bridge, a unifying link, in a single country vast enough to have developed so many different spoken tongues.

Related Facts

  • How Many Different Languages Are Spoken In Europe and What Is the Most Widely Spoken Language In Europe?
  • What Languages Are Spoken In Africa and What Is the Most Widely Spoken Language In Africa?
  • What Are the Most Widely Spoken Languages In the World and How Do Languages Become Extinct?
  • How Many Different Languages Are Spoken In the World Today and What Is a Dialect of a Language?
  • How Many Different Languages Are Spoken In Indonesia and What Is the Population of Indonesia?
  • Why do the Chinese call the Yellow River in China "China's Sorrow"?

Filed Under: History

About Karen Hill

Karen Hill is a freelance writer, editor, and columnist. Born in New York, her work has appeared in the Examiner, Yahoo News, Buzzfeed, among others.

Previous Post: « Who built the Great Wall of China and when was it completed?
Next Post: Why did Japanese landscape artist Katsushika Hokusai call himself “the crazy painter”? »

Footer

Follow

  • Facebook
  • Flickr
  • GitHub
  • Google+
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Medium
  • Pinterest
  • StumbleUpon
  • Tumblr
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Categories

Accomplishments Animals Culture Firsts Food Geography Health History Inventions Language Mythology Odds People Religion Science Space Universe World Your Body

About

Zippy Facts empowers the world by serving educational content that is accessible to everyone.

A tribute to growing up, zippyfacts.com showcases interesting and unusual facts about the world.

Our mission is to use technology to facilitate knowledge transfer and sharing.

Copyright © 2021 Zippy Facts

  • About Us
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy