{"id":97,"date":"2019-02-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-02-03T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/log.cudoo.com\/2018\/03\/11\/where-is-chinese-mandarin-spoken\/"},"modified":"2020-02-24T20:45:21","modified_gmt":"2020-02-24T16:45:21","slug":"where-is-chinese-mandarin-spoken","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cudoo.com\/blog\/where-is-chinese-mandarin-spoken\/","title":{"rendered":"Where is Chinese (Mandarin) Spoken?"},"content":{"rendered":"

China has the largest population in the world with approximately 1.4 billion people, so learning to speak the Chinese language means you will be able to communicate with a gazillion people in the world! That’s just simple math that makes sense, whether you are the next Fermat or not.<\/p>\n

One-fifth of the planet speaks Chinese. Learning Mandarin Chinese<\/a> is one of the absolute best investments you can make for your personal and professional growth.<\/p>\n

Whether you\u2019re looking for a new academic pursuit, a new career skill or a new perspective on life, there are few activities likely to have the same huge payoff. Unlike other East Asian languages such as Korean and Japanese, the Mandarin language is free from complicated grammar.<\/p>\n

Apart from China, there are various speakers of Mandarin Chinese spread across the globe.<\/p>\n

Where is Mandarin Chinese spoken in the world?<\/h2>\n

China<\/h2>\n

\"peking-1908167_640-1.jpg\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are as many as 292\u00a0living languages\u00a0in China.\u00a0The languages that are most commonly spoken belong to the\u00a0Sinitic branch\u00a0of the\u00a0Sino-Tibetan language\u00a0family, which contains Mandarin (spoken natively by 70% of the population),\u00a0and other\u00a0Chinese varieties.<\/p>\n

Standard Mandarin, a variety of Mandarin based on the\u00a0Beijing dialect, is the official national language of China and is used as a\u00a0lingua franca\u00a0in the country between people of different linguistic backgrounds.<\/p>\n

Taiwan<\/h2>\n

\"night-market-1714683_640.jpg\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mandarin\u00a0is the official national language and is spoken by the vast majority of the population of Taiwan. It has been the primary language of instruction in schools since the end of Japanese rule.<\/p>\n

As in\u00a0Hong Kong\u00a0and\u00a0Macau, Traditional Chinese\u00a0is used as the writing system in Taiwan. The 70% of the population belonging to the\u00a0Hoklo\u00a0ethnic group speak\u00a0Taiwanese Hokkien\u00a0(a variant of the\u00a0Min Nan\u00a0speech of\u00a0Fujian\u00a0province) as their mother tongue, in addition to Mandarin, and many others have some degree of understanding.<\/p>\n

Most\u00a0waishengren<\/em>\u00a0speak primarily Mandarin. Although Mandarin is the language of instruction in schools and dominates television and radio, non-Mandarin\u00a0Chinese varieties\u00a0have undergone a revival in public life in Taiwan, particularly since restrictions on their use were lifted in the 1990s.<\/p>\n

Chinese travel phrases you need to know before you visit China<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Singapore<\/h2>\n

\"asia-1782429_640.jpg\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

Singapore has four official languages: English<\/a>, Malay<\/a>, Mandarin Chinese<\/a>, and\u00a0Tamil<\/a><\/em>. Singaporean Mandarin\u00a0is predominantly spoken as the native language by the greatest number of Singaporeans, with 1.2\u00a0million speaking it as their mother tongue.<\/p>\n

Nearly half a million people speak other\u00a0varieties of Chinese, mainly\u00a0Hokkien,\u00a0Teochew, and\u00a0Cantonese, as their home language, although the use of these is declining in favor of Mandarin and English.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Macau<\/h2>\n

\"macau-1654180_640.jpg\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

Macau’s official languages are\u00a0Chinese\u00a0(Cantonese) and\u00a0Portuguese<\/a>.\u00a0Macau still retains its own dialect of Portuguese, called\u00a0Macanese Portuguese. Other languages, such as\u00a0Mandarin,\u00a0English, and\u00a0Hokkien,\u00a0are spoken by local communities.<\/p>\n

Hong Kong<\/h2>\n

\"cityscape-1081704_640.jpg\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

Signs displaying both Chinese and English are common throughout the territory. Since the 1997 Handover, an increase in immigrants from mainland China and greater interaction with the mainland’s economy have brought an increasing number of\u00a0Mandarin\u00a0speakers to Hong Kong.<\/p>\n

According to the 2011 census, Mandarin is spoken by 47.8% of the population, with 1.4 percent as a first language and 46.5 percent as a second language.<\/p>\n

Fun Facts About the Chinese Language<\/h2>\n
    \n
  1. If you know 1000 commonly used characters, you will recognize 90% of the characters in\u00a0Chinese newspapers.<\/li>\n
  2. Chinese grammar is very straightforward: no plurals, no tenses, no subject-verb agreement, and no conjugations.<\/li>\n
  3. Mandarin Chinese\u00a0doesn’t have an alphabet. It is written with symbols.<\/li>\n
  4. Chinese is one of the few languages that remain pictographic, with Chinese calligraphy a form of art.<\/li>\n
  5. Chinese characters can be written from left to right, right to left, or from top to bottom.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    \n

    In summary, there are more people speaking Chinese than English. It\u2019s the number one spoken language in the world. Here is a well-known Chinese proverb to inspire you to learn a new language.<\/span><\/p>\n

    “To learn a language is to have one more window from which to look at the world.”<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

    Check out our latest blog for more popular\u00a0Chinese proverbs and idioms.<\/a><\/p>\n

    If you learn Chinese<\/a>, you will be able to talk to one in five people on the planet in their own language. Now that’s impressive!<\/p>\n

    \n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    China has the largest population in the world with approximately 1.4 billion people, so learning to speak the Chinese language means you will be able to communicate with a gazillion people in the world! That’s just simple math that makes sense, whether you are the next Fermat or not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":762,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[3321,3323,3322],"yst_prominent_words":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cudoo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cudoo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cudoo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cudoo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cudoo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/cudoo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5433,"href":"https:\/\/cudoo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions\/5433"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cudoo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cudoo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cudoo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cudoo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cudoo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=97"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}