Chinese Language Overview

The Chinese language (汉语/漢語, 华语/華語, or 中文; pinyin: hànyu, huáyu, or zhongwén) is a member of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. Although most Chinese view the many varieties of spoken Chinese as a single language, the variations in spoken language are comparable to those of Romance languages; the written language has also changed over time, though far more slowly than the spoken language, and hence has been able to transcend much of the variation in spoken language.

The terms and concepts used by Chinese to think about language are different from those used in the West, partly because of the unifying effects of the Chinese characters used in writing, and partly because of differences in the political and social development of China in comparison with Europe. Whereas after the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe fragmented into small nation-states, the identities of which were often defined by language, China was able to preserve cultural and political unity through the same period.

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