Varieties of Chinese

There are hundreds of local Chinese language varieties forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast part of mainland China. The varieties are typically classified into ten primary groups: Mandarin, Jin, Wu, Hui, Min, Xiang, Gan, Hakka, Yue, and Pinghua though some varieties remain unclassified. These groups are neither clades nor individual languages defined by mutual intelligibility, but are identified by common correspondences with selected features of Middle Chinese.