Chinese can be considered a language or a language family and is originally the indigenous language spoken by the Han Chinese in China. It forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages. About one-sixth of the world’s population, or over 1 billion people, speaks some form of Chinese as their native language.
The identification of the varieties of Chinese as "languages" or "dialects" is controversial. As a language family Chinese has an estimated nearly 1.2 billion speakers. Mandarin Chinese alone has around 850 million native speakers, considerably outnumbering any other language in the world.
The standardized form of spoken Chinese is Standard Mandarin based on the Beijing dialect. Standard Mandarin is the official language of the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China in Taiwan, as well as one of the four official languages of Singapore. Standard Mandarin is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Of the other varieties, Standard Cantonese is common and influential in Cantonese-speaking overseas communities, and remains one of the official languages of Hong Kong (together with English) and of Macau (together with Portuguese).
The relationship among the Chinese spoken and written languages is a complex one. Its spoken variations evolved at different rates, while written Chinese itself has changed much less.
About the schools
China is one of the biggest and fastest growing economies in the world and is considered by many as a superpower. With this fact in mind Chinese is also considered to be one of the most influential and important languages in the near future.
Language schools offering Chinese as a foreign language are becoming more and more popular and are increasing in numbers rapidly. Most of these schools are found in mainland China but also in Singapore and Hong Kong.
Chinese can be considered a language or a language family and is originally the indigenous language spoken by the Han Chinese in China. It forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages. About one-sixth of the world’s population, or over 1 billion people, speaks some form of Chinese as their native language.