![New-Map-Sinophone World](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/New-Map-Sinophone_World.PNG)
Sinophone, which means "
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
-speaking", typically refers to an individual who speaks at least one
variety of the Chinese language. Academic writers often use the term Sinophone in two definitions: either specifically "Chinese-speaking populations where it is a minority language, excluding
Mainland China
"Mainland China" is a geopolitical term defined as the territory governed by the People's Republic of China (including islands like Hainan or Chongming), excluding dependent territories of the PRC, and other territories within Greater China. ...
,
Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...
,
Macau
Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a pop ...
, and
Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...
" or generally "Chinese-speaking areas, including where it is an official language". Many authors use the
collocation
In corpus linguistics, a collocation is a series of words or terms that co-occur more often than would be expected by chance. In phraseology, a collocation is a type of compositional phraseme, meaning that it can be understood from the words th ...
Sinophone world or Chinese-speaking world to mean the Chinese-speaking world itself (consisting of
Greater China
Greater China is an informal geographical area that shares commercial and cultural ties with the Han Chinese people. The notion of "Greater China" refers to the area that usually encompasses Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan in East A ...
and
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...
) or the distribution of the Chinese
diaspora
A diaspora ( ) is a population that is scattered across regions which are separate from its geographic place of origin. Historically, the word was used first in reference to the dispersion of Greeks in the Hellenic world, and later Jews after ...
outside of Greater China.
Mandarin Chinese
Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language of ...
is the most commonly spoken variety of the Chinese language today, with over 1 billion total speakers (approximately 12% of the world population), of which about 900 million are native speakers, making it the
most spoken first language in the world and
second most spoken overall. It is the official variety of Chinese in mainland
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
,
Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...
, and
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...
. Meanwhile,
Cantonese
Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding are ...
is the official variety of Chinese in
Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...
and
Macau
Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a pop ...
and is also widely spoken (along with
Hokkien
The Hokkien () variety of Chinese is a Southern Min language native to and originating from the Minnan region, where it is widely spoken in the south-eastern part of Fujian in southeastern mainland China. It is one of the national languages in ...
) among significant
Overseas Chinese
Overseas Chinese () refers to people of Chinese birth or ethnicity who reside outside Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. As of 2011, there were over 40.3 million overseas Chinese.
Terminology
() or ''Hoan-kheh'' () in Hokkien, refe ...
communities in
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, south-eastern region of Asia, consistin ...
as well as the rest of the world.
Etymology
The
etymology
Etymology ()The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the Phonological chan ...
of
Sinophone
Sinophone, which means "Chinese-speaking", typically refers to an individual who speaks at least one variety of the Chinese language. Academic writers often use the term Sinophone in two definitions: either specifically "Chinese-speaking populat ...
stems from ''
Sino-
The names of China include the many contemporary and historical appellations given in various languages for the East Asian country known as ''Zhōngguó'' (/, "middle country") in its national language, Standard Mandarin. China, the name in Engl ...
'' "China; Chinese" (cf.
Sinology
Sinology, or Chinese studies, is an academic discipline that focuses on the study of China primarily through Chinese philosophy, language, literature, culture and history and often refers to Western scholarship. Its origin "may be traced to th ...
) and ''
-phone'' "speaker of a certain language" (e.g.
Anglophone
Speakers of English are also known as Anglophones, and the countries where English is natively spoken by the majority of the population are termed the ''Anglosphere''. Over two billion people speak English , making English the largest language ...
,
Francophone
French became an international language in the Middle Ages, when the power of the Kingdom of France made it the second international language, alongside Latin. This status continued to grow into the 18th century, by which time French was the l ...
).
Edward McDonald (2011) claimed the word ''sinophone'' "seems to have been coined separately and simultaneously on both sides of the Pacific" in 2005, by
Geremie Barmé
Geremie R. Barmé (born 1954) is an Australian sinologist, author, and film-maker on modern and traditional China. He was formerly Director, Australian Centre on China in the World and Chair Professor of Chinese History at Australian National ...
of
Australia National University
The Australian National University (ANU) is a public research university located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton encompasses seven teaching and research colleges, in addition to several national academies and ...
and Shu-mei Shih of
UCLA
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...
. Barmé (2008) explained the "Sinophone world" as "one consisting of the individuals and communities who use one or another—or, indeed, a number—of China-originated languages and dialects to make meaning of and for the world, be it through speaking, reading, writing or via an engagement with various electronic media." Shih (2004:29) noted, "By 'sinophone' literature I mean literature written in Chinese by Chinese-speaking writers in various parts of the world outside China, as distinguished from 'Chinese literature'—literature from China."
Nevertheless, there are two earlier ''sinophone'' usages. Ruth Keen (1988:231) defined "Sinophone communities" in
Chinese literature as "the Mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia and the U.S." Coulombe and Roberts (2001:12) compared students of
French between ''
anglophones
Speakers of English are also known as Anglophones, and the countries where English is natively spoken by the majority of the population are termed the '' Anglosphere''. Over two billion people speak English , making English the largest languag ...
'' "with English as their mother tongue" and ''
allophones
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in ''s ...
'' (in the
Quebec English
Quebec English encompasses the English dialects (both native and non-native) of the predominantly French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec. There are few distinctive phonological features and very few restricted lexical features common among ...
sense) "without English or French as their mother tongue", including ''sinophones'' defined as "Cantonese/Mandarin speakers".
The ''
Oxford English Dictionary
The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a com ...
'' does not yet include ''Sinophone'', but records 1900 as the earliest usage of the
French loanwords ''Francophone'' for "French-speaking" and ''Anglophone'' for "English-speaking". The
French language
French ( or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in Gaul, and more specifically in Nor ...
– which first used ''Sinophone'' to mean "Chinese-speaking" in 1983 (CNRTL 2012) – differentiates ' meaning "French-speaking, especially in a region where two or more languages are spoken" and ' "French-speaking, collectively, the French-speaking world" (commonly abbreviating the
Organisation internationale de la Francophonie
The (OIF; sometimes shortened to the Francophonie, french: La Francophonie , but also called International Organisation of in English-language context) is an international organization representing countries and regions where French is a ...
).
Haun Saussy
Caleb Powell Haun Saussy (born February 15, 1960) is University Professor at the University of Chicago.
Research
Saussy's first book, ''The Problem of a Chinese Aesthetic'' (Stanford UP, 1993), discussed the tradition of commentary that has grow ...
contrasted the English lexicon lacking an inclusive term like ''Sinophonie'' or ''Sinophonia'', and thus using ''Sinophone'' to mean both "Chinese-speaking, especially in a region where it is a minority language" and "all Chinese-speaking areas, including
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
and
Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...
,
Chinese-speaking world
Sinophone, which means "Chinese-speaking", typically refers to an individual who speaks at least one variety of the Chinese language. Academic writers often use the term Sinophone in two definitions: either specifically "Chinese-speaking populat ...
".
"Sinophone" operates as a calque on "Francophone", as the application of the logic of Francophonie to the domain of Chinese extraterritorial speech. But that analogy is sure to hiccup, like all analogies, at certain points. Some, but not all, Francophone regions are populated by descendants of French emigrants, as virtually all of Sinophonia (I think) is populated by descendants of Chinese emigrants. Other regions, the majority in both area and population, are Francophone as a result of conquest or enslavement. That might be true of some areas of China too, but in a far more distant past. And at another level, the persistence of French had to do with the exportation of educational protocols by the Grande Nation herself, something that wasn't obviously true of the Middle Kingdom in recent decades but now, with the Confucius Institutes, is perhaps taking form. (2012)
English ''Sinophonia'' was the theme of an international conference organized by Christopher Lupke, President of the Association of Chinese and Comparative Literature, and hosted by Peng Hsiao-yen, Senior Researcher in the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, (
Academia Sinica
Academia Sinica (AS, la, 1=Academia Sinica, 3=Chinese Academy; ), headquartered in Nangang, Taipei, is the national academy of Taiwan. Founded in Nanking, the academy supports research activities in a wide variety of disciplines, ranging from ...
2012) on "Global Sinophonia" – Chinese ''Quanqiu Huayu Wenhua'' 全球華語文化 (literally "global Chinese-language culture").
Usages
In the two decades since the English word ''sinophone'' was coined, it has gone through
semantic change
Semantic change (also semantic shift, semantic progression, semantic development, or semantic drift) is a form of language change regarding the evolution of word usage—usually to the point that the modern meaning is radically different from ...
and increasing usage. Authors currently use it in at least two meanings, the general sense of "Chinese-speaking", and the academic "Chinese-speaking, especially in areas where it is a minority language." Shu-mei Shih, one of the leading academic authorities on Sinophone scholarship, summarized treatments.
In the past few years, scholars have used the term ''Sinophone'' for largely denotative purposes to mean "Chinese-speaking" or "written in Chinese". Sau-ling Wong used it to designate Chinese American literature written in "Chinese" as opposed to English ("Yellow"); historians of the Manchu empire such as Pamela Kyle Crossley, Evelyn S. Rawski, and Jonathan Lipman described "Chinese-speaking" Hui Muslims in China as Sinophone Muslims as opposed to Uyghur Muslims, who speak Turkic languages; Patricia Schiaini- Vedani and Lara Maconi distinguished between Tibetan writers who write in the Tibetan script and "Chinese-language", or Sinophone, Tibetan writers. Even though the main purpose of these scholars' use of the term is denotative, their underlying intent is to clarify contrast by naming: in highlighting a Sinophone Chinese American literature, Wong exposes the anglophone bias of scholars and shows that American literature is multilingual; Crossley, Rawski, and Lipman emphasize that Muslims in China have divergent languages, histories, and experiences; Schiaini- Vedani and Maconi suggest the predicament of Tibetan writers who write in the "language of the colonizer" and whose identity is bound up with linguistic difference. (2013:8)
General meanings
"Chinese-speaking" is the
literal meaning
Literal and figurative language is a distinction within some fields of language analysis, in particular stylistics, rhetoric, and semantics.
*Literal language uses words exactly according to their conventionally accepted meanings or denotation. ...
of ''sinophone'', without the academic distinction of speakers outside of
Greater China
Greater China is an informal geographical area that shares commercial and cultural ties with the Han Chinese people. The notion of "Greater China" refers to the area that usually encompasses Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan in East A ...
.
The ''
Wiktionary
Wiktionary ( , , rhyming with "dictionary") is a multilingual, web-based project to create a free content dictionary of terms (including words, phrases, proverbs, linguistic reconstructions, etc.) in all natural languages and in a number ...
'' is one of the few dictionaries that define ':
* adjective "Speaking one or more Sinitic or Chinese language(s), Chinese-speaking"
* noun "a person who speaks one or more of the Sinitic or Chinese language(s) either natively or by adoption, a Chinese-speaking person."
Academic meanings
The word ''sinophone'' has different meanings among scholars in fields such as
Sinology
Sinology, or Chinese studies, is an academic discipline that focuses on the study of China primarily through Chinese philosophy, language, literature, culture and history and often refers to Western scholarship. Its origin "may be traced to th ...
,
linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
,
comparative literature
Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across linguistic, national, geographic, and disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role similar to that of the study ...
,
language teaching
Language education – the process and practice of teaching a second or foreign language – is primarily a branch of applied linguistics, but can be an interdisciplinary field. There are four main learning categories for language education: ...
, and
postcolonialism
Postcolonialism is the critical academic study of the cultural, political and economic legacy of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the impact of human control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands. More specifically, it is a ...
.
Recent definitions of the word include:
* The Sinophone encompasses Sinitic-language communities and their expressions (cultural, political, social, etc.) on the margins of nations and nationalness in the internal colonies and other minority communities in China as well as outside it, with the exception of settler colonies where the Sinophone is the dominant vis-à-vis their indigenous populations. (Shih 2011:716)
*The Sinophone world refers to Sinitic-language cultures and communities born of colonial and postcolonial histories on the margins of geopolitical nation-states all across the world. (Cambria 2012)
Geographic distribution
Chinese-speaking countries
Chinese is an
official language
An official language is a language given supreme status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically the term "official language" does not refer to the language used by a people or country, but by its government (e.g. judiciary, ...
of five countries and territories. While Chinese is a group of related languages rather than a single language itself, the governments of nearly all nations and territories where it is official simply designate the ambitious "Chinese" to refer to the official variant used in administration and education, with the exception of Singapore.
[, s7.]
Mandarin
Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to:
Language
* Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country
** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China
** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...
is the sole official language of both the
People's Republic of China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
(PRC) and the
Republic of China
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northeast ...
(ROC, Taiwan) as well as one of the four official languages of
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...
. It is also one of the six
official languages of the United Nations
The Official Languages of the United Nations are the six languages that are used in UN meetings and in which all official UN documents are written. In the six languages, four are the official language or national language of permanent members in ...
.
Cantonese
Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding are ...
is an official language of
Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...
and
Macau
Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a pop ...
(alongside
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
and
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
respectively), where it is the dominant variety of Chinese rather than Mandarin.
Overseas communities
Overseas Chinese
Overseas Chinese () refers to people of Chinese birth or ethnicity who reside outside Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. As of 2011, there were over 40.3 million overseas Chinese.
Terminology
() or ''Hoan-kheh'' () in Hokkien, refe ...
and Chinese-speaking communities are found worldwide, with the most sizable concentrated in much of
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, south-eastern region of Asia, consistin ...
and some countries in the Western World, particularly the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
,
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
,
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
,
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
, and
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
. The
usage and varieties of Chinese among the Chinese diaspora is usually dependent on various factors, mostly the ancestral region of the dominant Chinese group and official language policy of the country of residence. In Southeast Asia, Cantonese and
Hokkien
The Hokkien () variety of Chinese is a Southern Min language native to and originating from the Minnan region, where it is widely spoken in the south-eastern part of Fujian in southeastern mainland China. It is one of the national languages in ...
are the dominant
variants of Chinese, with the former traditionally serving as a ''
lingua franca
A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...
'' amongst most ethnic Chinese in the region. In Western countries with large ethnic Chinese populations, more established Chinese communities use Cantonese, although Mandarin is increasingly spoken by newer arrivals.
Malaysia
Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...
is the only country outside of the Chinese-speaking world that permits the usage of Chinese as a medium of instruction. This is largely influenced by the fact that
Malaysian Chinese
Malaysian Chinese (; Malay: ''Orang Cina Malaysia''), alternatively Chinese Malaysians, are Malaysian citizens of Han Chinese descent. They form the second largest ethnic group after the Malay majority constituting 22.4% of the Malaysian po ...
comprise nearly a quarter of the country's population and have traditionally been highly influential in the country's economic sector. While Mandarin is the variant of Chinese used in Chinese-language schools, speakers of Hokkien form a plurality in the ethnic Chinese population and Cantonese serves as the common language, especially in commerce and media.
As a foreign language
With the economic and political rise of the Sinophone world since the latter half of the 20th century, particularly China itself starting in the 1980s, Mandarin Chinese has increasingly become a popular
foreign language
A foreign language is a language that is not an official language of, nor typically spoken in, a given country, and that native speakers from that country must usually acquire through conscious learning - be this through language lessons at schoo ...
throughout the world. While not as widespread as a standard foreign language at the scale of English, French, Spanish, or German, student enrollment rates and courses in Mandarin have rapidly grown in
East
East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth.
Etymology
As in other languages, the word is formed from the fa ...
and
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, south-eastern region of Asia, consistin ...
and Western countries. Besides standard Mandarin, Cantonese is the only other Chinese language that is widely taught as a foreign language, in part due to the global economic importance of Hong Kong and its widespread presence in significant Overseas Chinese communities.
Statistics
''
Ethnologue
''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensiv ...
'' estimates the total number of Sinophones at about 1.4 billion worldwide as of 2020, the vast majority (1.3 billion) of whom are native speakers.
The most spoken branch of Chinese is
Mandarin
Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to:
Language
* Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country
** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China
** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...
with 1.12 billion speakers (921 million native speakers), followed by
Yue (which includes
Cantonese
Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding are ...
) with 85 million speakers (84 million native). Other branches of the Chinese language subgroup with over 2 million speakers include:
Wu with 82 million (81.7 million native),
Min Nan
Southern Min (), Minnan ( Mandarin pronunciation: ) or Banlam (), is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Sinitic languages that form a branch of Min Chinese spoken in Fujian (especially the Minnan region), most of Taiwan ...
with 49 million (48.4 million native),
Hakka
The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka Han, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas are a Han Chinese subgroup whose ancestral homes are chiefly in the Hakka-speaking provincial areas of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Zhej ...
with 48.2 million,
Jin with 47 million,
Xiang with 37.3 million,
Gan
The word Gan or the initials GAN may refer to:
Places
*Gan, a component of Hebrew placenames literally meaning "garden"
China
* Gan River (Jiangxi)
* Gan River (Inner Mongolia),
* Gan County, in Jiangxi province
* Gansu, abbreviated ''Gā ...
with 22.1 million,
Min Bei
Northern Min () is a group of mutually intelligible Min varieties spoken in Nanping prefecture of northwestern Fujian.
Classification and distribution
Early classifications of varieties of Chinese, such as those of Li Fang-Kuei in 1937 and Y ...
with 11 million,
Min Dong with 10.3 million,
Huizhou
Huizhou ( zh, c= ) is a city in central-east Guangdong Province, China, forty-three miles north of Hong Kong. Huizhou borders the provincial capital of Guangzhou to the west, Shenzhen and Dongguan to the southwest, Shaoguan to the north, Heyua ...
with 4.6 million, and
Pu-Xian Min
Puxian (Hinghwa Romanized: ''Pó-sing-gṳ̂''; ), also known as Pu-Xian Chinese, Puxian Min, Xinghua, Henghwa or Hinghwa (''Hing-hua̍-gṳ̂''; ), is a Sinitic language that forms a branch of Min Chinese. Puxian is a transitional variety of C ...
with 2.5 million.
Below is a table of the Chinese-speaking population in various countries and territories:
Notes
References
General references
* Academia Sinica (2012)
International Conference on "Global Sinophonia" 「全球華語文化」國際研討會
* Bachner, Andrea (July 2011),
, ''Modern Chinese Literature and Culture''.
* Barmé, Geremie R. (2005)
On New Sinology: ''Chinese Studies Association of Australia Newsletter'' 3.
* Cambria Press (2012)
Cambria Sinophone World Series University of Pennsylvania.
* (CNRTL) Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales (2012)
sinophone electronic ''
Trésor de la langue française
The ''Trésor de la langue française'' (''TLF'', subtitled ''Dictionnaire de la langue du XIXe et du XXe siècle (1789–1960)'') is a 16-volume dictionary of 19th- and 20th-century French published by the ''Centre de Recherche pour un Trésor ...
''.
* Coulombe, Diane and William L. Roberts (2001),
The French-as-a-second-language learning experience of anglophone and allophone university students," ''Research on Immigration and Integration in the Metropolis'' Working Paper Series 01–02, Vancouver Centre of Excellence.
* Keen, Ruth (1988), "Information Is All That Counts: An Introduction to Chinese Women's Writing in German Translation," ''Modern Chinese Literature'' 4.2:225–234. .
* Lewis, M. Paul ed. (2009),
Ethnologue: Languages of the World', 16th edition, SIL International.
* Mair, Victor (2012),
Sinophone and Sinosphere"
Language Log
''Language Log'' is a collaborative language blog maintained by Mark Liberman, a phonetician at the University of Pennsylvania.
Most of the posts focus on language use in the media and in popular culture. Text available through Google Search fr ...
.
* McDonald, Edward (2011),
The '中国通' or the 'Sinophone'? Towards a political economy of Chinese language teaching" ''China Heritage Quarterly'' 25.
* Lu, Sheldon Hsiao-peng (2007),
" ''Modern Chinese Literature and Culture''.
* Saussy, Haun (2012),
On The Phone" ''Printculture''.
* Shih, Shu-Mei (2004), "Global Literature and the Technologies of Recognition," ''PMLA'' 119.1, 16–30. . .
* Shih, Shu-mei (2005), "Sinophone Articulations Across the Pacific," Ostasiatisches Seminar: Chinese Diasporic and Exile Experience, Universität Zürich.
* Shih, Shu-mei (2007), ''Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations across the Pacific'', University of California Press.
* Shih, Shu-Mei (2010), "Theory, Asia and the Sinophone", ''Postcolonial Studies'' 13.4:465–484.
* Shih, Shu-mei (2011),
The Concept of the Sinophone" ''PMLA'' 126.3, 709–718. . .
* Shih, Shu-mei, Chien-hsin Tsai, and Brian Bernards, eds. (2013), ''Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader'', Columbia University Press.
* Thornber, Karen (June 2012), Review of Jing Tsu's ''Sound and Script in Chinese Diaspora'', ''Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies'', 72.1, 195–202. . .
* Tsu, Jing (2010), ''Sound and Script in Chinese Diaspora'', Harvard University Press.
* Tsu, Jing (2011), "New Area Studies and Languages on the Move", ''PMLA'' 126.3, 693–700. . .
* Tsu, Jing (2010), "Epilogue: Sinophone Writings and Chinese Diaspora", in
Stephen Owen and
Kang-i Sun Chang
Kang-i Sun Chang (born Sun K'ang-i, ; 21 February 1944), is a Chinese-born American sinologist. She is a scholar of classical Chinese literature. She is the inaugural Malcolm G. Chace Professor, and former chair of the Department of East Asian La ...
, eds., ''Cambridge History of Chinese Literature'' 704–712.
* Tsu, Jing (2010), "Sinophonics and the Nationalization of Chinese", in Jing Tsu and David Der-wei Wang, eds., ''Global Chinese Literature: Critical Essays'', Brill.
* Tsu, Jing and David Der-wei Wang, eds. (2010), ''Global Chinese Literature: Critical Essays'', Brill.
External links
Globalizing Modern Chinese Literature: Sinophone and Diasporic Writingsconference, Harvard University, December 6–8, 2007.
See also
*
*
East Asian cultural sphere
The East Asian cultural sphere, also known as the Sinosphere, the Sinic world, the Sinitic world, the Chinese cultural sphere, the Chinese character sphere encompasses multiple countries in East Asia and Southeast Asia that were historically ...
, sometimes known as the ''Sinosphere''
{{Phones
Chinese language
Cultural regions