中国民族语言(Chinese languages)

中国语族乃是汉藏诸语言的两个分支中的其中之一。约95%定居在中国的住民，以及移民到世界各地的中国族群，都使用中国民族语言。语言学家认为中国主要的语群所使用的语言都是独特的语言，但所有的中国人都书写同一套意符文字（参阅Chinese writing system），并且共同以文言文为其文化遗产。传统上仍认为，所有中国语言的变体都被视为方言。在中国的民族语言里，北方方言间相互理解的程度极高，并涵盖长江（扬子江）以北、湖南、广东以西所有的中国口音。而有相当数目的其他方言，集中在中国东南方，於是在北方方言与这些区域语群间，存在这个最基本的区别。在世界上，有最多的人口－－超过八亿八千五百万人－－使用汉语的各种变体为其母语。北京的北方方言是现代标准汉语的基础，作为超越方言之通用语的口语形式。在北汉语之外的重要方言包括吴方言（使用於上海）、赣方言、湘方言、闽方言（使用於福建和台湾）、粤方言（包括广东话，使用於广州和香港）以及客家人所使用的客家方言。现代中国语言属声调语言，其声调数目从现代标准汉语中的四声到各地方言达九声之多。

English version：

Chinese languages

Family of languages comprising one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan. They are spoken by about 95% of the inhabitants of China and by many communities of Chinese immigrants elsewhere. Linguists regard the major dialect groups of Chinese as distinct languages, though because all Chinese write with a common system of logographic characters (see Chinese writing system) and share Classical Chinese as a heritage, traditionally all varieties of Chinese are regarded as dialects. There is a primary division in Chinese languages between the so-called Mandarin dialects—which have a high degree of mutual intelligibility and cover all of the Chinese speech area north of the Chang (Yangtze) River and west of Hunan and Guangdong—and a number of other dialect groups concentrated in southeastern China. Far more people—over 885 million—speak a variety of Mandarin Chinese as a first language than any other language in the world. The northern Mandarin dialect of Beijing is the basis for Modern Standard Chinese, a spoken norm that serves as a supradialectal lingua franca. Important dialect groups other than Mandarin are Wu (spoken in Shanghai), Gan, Xiang, Min (spoken in Fujian and Taiwan), Yue (including Cantonese, spoken in Guangzhou and Hong Kong), and Kejia (Hakka), spoken by the Hakka. The modern Chinese languages are tone languages, the number of tones varying from four in Modern Standard Chinese to nine in dialects.