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( Spoken Chinese)
Spoken Chinese (simplified Chinese ???; traditional Chinese ??[1]) comprises many regional variants, the largest of which are Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese, and Min. These sub-groups of the Chinese spoken language are, for the most part, not mutually intelligible. Although the English word dialect is often used to translate the Chinese term fangyan (Chinese ??; literally "regional speech"), the differences between the major variants Chinese are great enough that they are mutually unintelligible, a criterion used by many linguists to distinguish different languages from dialects of a single language. However, most Chinese view them as variants of a single Chinese language, which is often a prime consideration of a dialect. (See Identification of the varieties of Chinese for more details) Chinese people make an impressional strong distinction between written language (?, Pinyin wén) and spoken language (?/? yu). English does not necessarily have this distinction. As a result the terms Zhongwen (??) and Hanyu (??) in Chinese are both translated in English as "Chinese". Within China, it is common perception that these varieties are distinct in their spoken forms only, and that the language, when written, is common across the country. Therefore even though China is home to hundreds of relatively unique spoken languages, literate people are usually able to communicate through written language effectively.
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