Studying Chinese is becoming very popular throughout the Western
world. But how is Chinese different from other languages? What
are the characteristics that make it unique? About one-fifth of
the population in the world, or over one billion people, speak
some variety of Chinese as their native language. Chinese is
distinguished by its high level of internal diversity, although
all 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. Watch: Studying Chinese is getting popular
among elementary and high school students in America: The Spoken
Chinese language (whether Mandarin or Cantonese) is tonal. A few
dialects of north China may have as few as three tones, while
some dialects in south China have up to six or ten tones,
depending on how one counts. A very common example used to
illustrate the use of tones in Chinese is the four main tones of
Mandarin applied to the