你好!
say it: “nee how”
Mandarin Chinese
in its own words: 中文
- Speakers
- 1.1 billion (estimate)
- Family
- Sino-Tibetan
- Vitality
- Safe
- Where it is spoken
- People's Republic of China, North Korea, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Myanmar, Mongolia, Russian Federation, Taiwan, Province of China, Vietnam
- Script
- Chinese characters (simplified)
- Official language
- Hong Kong, Macao, People's Republic of China, Singapore, Taiwan, Province of China
Fun fact
Chinese characters generally represent morphemes (syllables), not sounds. Reading a newspaper requires about three thousand characters.