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From: spoondend
Email: shdbbs64@woyaotest.cn
Date: 11/02/09
Chinese or the Sinitic language(s) <a href=http://www.confuciusprograms.com><b>learn chinese</b></a> is a language family consisting of languages mutually unintelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages. About one-fifth of the worldĄŻs natives, or over one billion people, speak some form of Chinese as their native language. The naming of the varieties of <a href=http://www.confuciusprograms.com><b>learn chinese</b></a> as "dialects" rather than of "languages" is considered inappropriate by some linguists and Sinologists. Spoken <a href=http://www.confuciusprograms.com><b>learn chinese</b></a> is distinguished by its high level of internal inconsistency, although all spoken varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic. There are between seven and thirteen main regional groups of Chinese (depending on classification scheme), of which the most spoken, by far, is Mandarin (about 850 million), followed by Wu (90 million), Min (70 million) and Cantonese (Yue) (70 million). Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible, although some, like Xiang and the Southwest Mandarin dialects, may share common terms and some degree of intelligibility. Chinese is classified as a macrolanguage with 13 sub-languages in ISO 639-3, though the naming of the varieties of <a href=http://www.confuciusprograms.com><b>learn chinese</b></a> as multiple "languages" or as "dialects" of a single language is a contentious issue.