Is China Monolingual?

Written by Mr. Languagespud in Uncategorized

Thanks to the universal medium of modern technology, the world has become a smaller place as virtually any type of information can be found in a matter of seconds.

But as far as spoken and written communication is concerned, the world is still a patchwork of largely monolingual nations that speak and write only in one language.

Such is seemingly the case with China, the most populous country on the planet… Or is it?

From one perspective, China is overwhelmingly monolingual as ‘Chinese’ is almost exclusively spoken within its borders. (I say ‘almost’, but let’s not forget Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, and overseas Chinese.) But it is multilingual in the sense that millions of its own citizens cannot understand each other because they speak different dialects, or more accurately, varieties, of Chinese.

The question of whether China is monolingual or multilingual has many nuances and is not easily answered.

At the heart of this debate lies the fact that tens of millions of Chinese people may share the same national citizenship but might as well be from opposite sides of the planet when it comes to communicating with each other.

How so?

Read on to learn more about China’s linguistic enigma.

Is China Monolingual?

Answering the question of whether or not China is a monolingual nation depends on the particular criteria that are being used.

On the one hand, some form of the Chinese language is spoken by over 99 percent of the population in China, and this would certainly seem to qualify China as a monolingual nation with one singular, ubiquitous language spoken throughout.

But the linguistic landscape in China is not quite so simple; rather, it is a complex mash-up of Chinese:

  • Tongues
  • Colloquialisms 
  • Idiosyncrasies 
  • And wholly unique, non-Chinese languages thrown in for good measure 

There are, by some estimates, as many as 302 living languages spoken in China today, mostly by citizens of Chinese descent but also the 56 ethnic minorities that call China their home. 

So What Language Is Spoken In China?

As far as the Chinese language is concerned, linguistically, it is viewed by many experts as a family of dialects and variants rather than a single language. Underneath this large umbrella, scholars have recognized as many as ten distinct branches, each having its own subsets of regional parlance. 

From a formal perspective, the official language of China is commonly referred to as Standard Chinese, which is essentially a standardized dialect of Mandarin Chinese. It is by far and away the most widely spoken and understood form of Chinese. 

Here are a few noteworthy facts regarding China’s lingua franca:

  • In China, Standard Chinese is known as 普通话 (Pǔtōnghuà), meaning “common speech”.
  • It is the official state language in China and Taiwan.
  • Chinese law establishes Putonghua as China’s lingua franca (universal tongue to be used among speakers of all dialects and variants).
  • According to a Newsweek article published in 2017, the stated goal of the Chinese government was to have 80% of mainland China’s population capable of communicating in Standard Mandarin Chinese by the year 2020 (roughly 70% of the population can speak Standard Chinese currently, but only 10% can do so fluently).

As China moves forward toward achieving its goal of linguistic uniformity with Standard Chinese across the nation, it slowly inches closer to becoming truly monolingual.

But in a nation of 1.4 billion citizens, to say that this is an enormous undertaking would be quite an understatement.

What Languages are Spoken in China?

While Putonghua is the official language of China, in reality, it is but one of numerous dialects and variants that are spoken throughout the mainland. In fact, these ten branches of the Chinese language represent over 99 percent of what is spoken in mainland China:

  • Standard Mandarin – spoken by over 65% of China’s population
  • Min Chinese – 6.2%
  • Wu Chinese – 6.1%
  • Yue (Cantonese) Chinese – 5.6%
  • Jin Chinese – 5.1%
  • Gan Chinese – 3.9%
  • Hakka (Kejia) Chinese – 3.5%
  • Xiang Chinese – 3.0%
  • Huizhou Chinese – 0.3%
  • Pinghua Chinese and other unclassified dialects and variants – 0.6%

Most of these Chinese variations are true dialects in the sense that they are somewhat intelligible when a speaker of one communicates with a speaker of another, but others are not understandable at all when spoken to one another.

This is most notably the case when a native speaker of Standard Mandarin (spoken throughout mainland China but with origins in Beijing) encounters a person from Guangdong or Guanxi provinces (Southern China) or from Hong Kong or Macau, who speaks only Cantonese (Yue Chinese).

These two variants of the Chinese language are completely unintelligible from one to the other.

Is It Really A Big Deal If A Dialect Requires A Translator?

It is worth noting that while a mere 5.6% of China’s population speaks Cantonese as opposed to over 65% that speak Standard Mandarin. In a nation of 1.4 billion people, that seemingly modest figure equates to over 78 million people. 

To put this fact into proper perspective, there are more people in China that speak the “secondary” version of Chinese (i.e., Cantonese), which cannot be understood by the majority of mainland China, than the entire population of Italy.

Whether an Italian would have as much luck understanding a Standard Mandarin speaker as a native Cantonese speaker is not the issue in question.

However, this comparative circumstance is a compelling argument in favour of the notion that China is a multilingual country.

Conclusion

With a rich history dating back thousands of years, China’s linguistic landscape is as unique and varied as its people.

Without question, the overwhelming majority of China’s population speaks Mandarin Chinese in one form or another.

But in a nation as vast and populous as China, even dialects and variants of the same language can be worlds apart.

Further Reading

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