Despite being the official language of China, Mandarin is not universally spoken, with around 30% of the population not understanding it. The government has promoted it as a unifying force, but many regions and ethnic groups still support their native languages. However, progress has been made, with 70% of the population speaking Mandarin in 2013, up from 53% in 2004. There are an estimated 960 million native Mandarin speakers in China, with other languages such as Wu, Min, and Yue also spoken by millions. Overall, around 16% of the world’s population speaks some form of Chinese as their native language.
In China, Mandarin is known as Putonghua, which means “common language”. But in reality, Mandarin is far from universally spoken. A 2013 report by China’s education ministry revealed that some 400 million people – about 30 percent of the country’s population – don’t speak or don’t understand much Mandarin. Although Mandarin (also known as Standard Chinese) is the sole official language of China, there are hundreds of other languages and dialects spoken in the world’s (and third) most populous country. Many Chinese dialects are mutually incomprehensible. For decades, the Chinese government has sought to promote Mandarin as a unifying force across the large and diverse nation, but many regions and ethic groups have maintained strong support for their native languages, such as Cantonese and Shanghainese.
A not so common language:
However, the Chinese government appears to be making progress with the popularization of Mandarin, as only 53% of the population was reported to speak Mandarin in 2004, up from 70% in 2013.
There are an estimated 960 million native Mandarin speakers in China. Wu (which includes Shanghainese), Min and Yue (which includes Cantonese) are native languages of 80 million, 70 million and 60 million people in China, respectively.
About 1.2 billion people (that is, 16% of the world’s population) speak some form of Chinese as their native language.
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