Depends on which you mean with “Chinese”. Th - Cchatty

Depends on which you mean with “Chinese”.

There are many Chinese languages, many of which are unintelligible with each other. Those include languages such as Mandarin, Jin, Wu, Huizhou, Gan, Xiang, Min, Hakka, Yue, Ping.

Standard Mandarin is the sole official language of China and Taiwan, and one of the four official languages of Singapore. It’s called “Putonghua” (common speech) in China. This standardized dialect combines the phonology of Beijing with the vocabulary of other Mandarin dialects and the grammar of modern Chinese literature.

Standard Cantonese is the prestige dialect of Yue. It’s the majority language of the Pearl River Region, including Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Macau. It’s also used by many overseas Chinese.

The language closest to Mandarin would be Jin. The languages closest to Cantonese would be the other Yue languages. The closest to Yue would be Pinghua (spoken in Guangxi).

Chinese is part of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Classification of languages inside this family has been problematic, with many well-defined groups but no clear relationship between them. Other subfamilies within Sino-Tibetan include the Lolo-Burmese-Naic languages (which includes Burmese, Nuosu (Yi) and Naxi) and the Bodish languages (which include Tibetan).