Chinese

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Chinese Group of languages spoken by c.95% of the population of China and by millions more in Taiwan, Hong Kong, se Asia and elsewhere. There are six major languages, which are not mutually intelligible; the most common is Mandarin, spoken by c.66% of the Chinese population. All Chinese languages are written in a single common non-alphabetic script, whose characters number in the thousands and in some cases date back several thousand years. This single writing-system leads to the traditional classification of all Chinese languages as dialects of one language. Chinese has twice as many users as any other language in the world. See also Cantonese

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