The ''Language Atlas of China'' ( zh, s=中国语言地图集, t=中國語言地圖集, p=Zhōngguó yǔyán dìtú jí), published by Hong Kong

Longman Longman, also known as Pearson Longman, is a publisher, publishing company founded in 1724 in London, England, which is owned by Pearson PLC. Since 1968, Longman has been used primarily as an imprint by Pearson's Schools business. The Longman ...

Publishing Company in two parts in 1987 and 1989, maps the distribution of both the

varieties of Chinese There are hundreds of local Chinese language varieties forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages, Sino-Tibetan language family, many of which are not Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the m ...

and ethnic minority languages of China. The atlas was a collaborative effort by the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, published simultaneously in the original Chinese and in English translation. Endymion Wilkinson rated this joint venture "outstanding". A second edition was published by the Commercial Press in 2012.

Classification of Chinese varieties

The atlas organizes the

in a hierarchy of groupings, following the work of Li Rong: * supergroups ( ): Mandarin and Min * groups ( ): Jin, Wu, Hui, Xiang, Gan, Hakka, Yue, Pinghua and groups within Mandarin and Min * subgroups ( ) * clusters ( ) are only identified for some subgroups * local dialects ( ): localities that were surveyed

The atlas contains 36 coloured maps, printed on loose white sheets measuring . Each map is accompanied by a blue sheet of the same size containing explanatory notes. The atlas is divided into three sections: * A. General maps ** A1 Languages in China ** A2 Chinese dialects in China ** A3 Ethnic Minorities in China ** A4 Minority languages in China ** A5 Language distribution ( Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region) * B. Maps of Chinese dialects ** B1 Mandarin-1 ( Northeastern China) ** B2 Mandarin-2 (

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

Tianjin Tianjin is a direct-administered municipality in North China, northern China on the shore of the Bohai Sea. It is one of the National Central City, nine national central cities, with a total population of 13,866,009 inhabitants at the time of the ...

Hebei Hebei is a Provinces of China, province in North China. It is China's List of Chinese administrative divisions by population, sixth-most populous province, with a population of over 75 million people. Shijiazhuang is the capital city. It bor ...

and western

Shandong Shandong is a coastal Provinces of China, province in East China. Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history since the beginning of Chinese civilization along the lower reaches of the Yellow River. It has served as a pivotal cultural ...

) ** B3 Mandarin-3 ( Henan,

, northern

Anhui Anhui is an inland Provinces of China, province located in East China. Its provincial capital and largest city is Hefei. The province is located across the basins of the Yangtze and Huai rivers, bordering Jiangsu and Zhejiang to the east, Jiang ...

, northern Jiangsu) ** B4 Mandarin-4 (

Shaanxi Shaanxi is a Provinces of China, province in north Northwestern China. It borders the province-level divisions of Inner Mongolia to the north; Shanxi and Henan to the east; Hubei, Chongqing, and Sichuan to the south; and Gansu and Ningxia to t ...

Gansu Gansu is a provinces of China, province in Northwestern China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeastern part of the province. The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibetan Plateau, Ti ...

, Qinghai, Ningxia) ** B5 Mandarin-5 ( Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region) ** B6 Mandarin-6 (Southwestern China) ** B7 Jin group (

Shanxi Shanxi; Chinese postal romanization, formerly romanised as Shansi is a Provinces of China, province in North China. Its capital and largest city of the province is Taiyuan, while its next most populated prefecture-level cities are Changzhi a ...

and adjacent areas) ** B8 Chinese dialects (southeastern China) ** B9 Wu group ( Zhejiang, Shanghai, southern Jiangsu) ** B10 Chinese dialects (southern

area) ** B11 Chinese dialects (

Hunan Hunan is an inland Provinces of China, province in Central China. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the Administrative divisions of China, province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangxi to the east, Gu ...

and Jiangxi) ** B12 Min supergroup (

Fujian Fujian is a provinces of China, province in East China, southeastern China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, Guangdong to the south, and the Taiwan Strait to the east. Its capital is Fuzhou and its largest prefe ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

, eastern

Guangdong ) means "wide" or "vast", and has been associated with the region since the creation of Guang Prefecture in AD 226. The name "''Guang''" ultimately came from Guangxin ( zh, labels=no, first=t, t= , s=广信), an outpost established in Han dynasty ...

and Hainan) ** B13 Chinese dialects: Guangdong (mainland) ** B14 Chinese dialects (Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region) ** B15 Hakka group ** B16 Chinese dialects overseas: (a) insular Southeast Asia (b) other parts of the world * C. Maps of minority languages ** C1 Minority languages in northern China ** C2 Mongolian languages ** C3 Mongolian dialects ** C4 Turkic languages ** C5 Manchu-Tungus languages ** C6 Minority languages in southern China ** C7 Kam–Tai languages ** C8 Miao-Yao languages ** C9 Dialects of the Miao language ** C10 Tibeto-Burman languages ** C11 Tibetan dialects ** C12 Minority languages (Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region) ** C13 Minority languages (

Yunnan Yunnan; is an inland Provinces of China, province in Southwestern China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 47.2 million (as of 2020). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the Chinese provinces ...

province) ** C14 Minority languages on Hainan and Taiwan islands

Second edition

Work began on a revised edition in 2002. The work was published in 2012 as a joint venture between the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the City University of Hong Kong. It consists of two volumes, dealing respectively with varieties of Chinese and minority languages. The revision follows the same structure as the first edition, but the number of maps has increased to 79, and the explanatory text is greatly expanded. The number of minority languages covered has also increased from 81 to 130.

References

External links

* "Digital Language Atlas of China", compiled by Lawrence W. Crissman, version 6, 5 October 2012, Australian Centre for the Asian Spatial Information and Analysis Network (ACASIAN) GIS Data Archive. {{doi, 10.7910/DVN/OHYYXH (Harvard Dataverse). The full dataset consists of eight layers in ESRI shapefile format derived from the ''Language Atlas of China''. The initial release (under Creative Commons v3.0 – Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike) contains only a draft of the first layer, representing maps A1–4 and marking language families and major Chinese dialect groups, but not individual non-Chinese languages or subgroups of Chinese dialects. Books about China Languages of China

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

Varieties of Chinese 1987 non-fiction books

Classification of Chinese varieties

Contents

Second edition

See also

References

External links