Mandarin, Cantonese, Tibetan and about 400 other languages all belong to a group called Sino-Tibetan languages because of their shared origin. The languages are spoken by over 20 per cent of the world's population, only second to the Indo-European language group that includes English and Spanish.
Gan Chinese - 赣语 (gàn yǔ), (10 dialects)
Gan is the closest variety of Mandarin Chinese. Spoken by around 48 million people.
Xiang | 湘语 (xiāng yǔ)
It is also known as 湖南话 (Húnán huà) or “Hunan speech”. Many Xiang dialects have been heavily influenced by Mandarin since Mandarin-speaking areas surround the region where Xiang is spoken. Among varieties of Chinese, Xiang is one of the closest to Mandarin.
Chinese word order is closer to that of English, and other European languages to some extent, whereas Japanese word order has a closer resemblance to that of Korean, Mongolian and the Turkic languages. So for English speakers, Chinese is easier than Japanese from this aspect.
While the similarities between the two languages are noticeable, Chinese and Korean aren't mutually intelligible. Korean and Chinese people couldn't understand each other if they only used their native language in a conversation. That's because they're from different language families.
Thanks to its phonetic alphabet and more simplistic grammar rules, Korean is not the most challenging Asian language to learn. Chinese on the other hand is much more widely spoken. This means that finding study materials and practice partners would be easier.
So Which Chinese Language Should I Learn? Mandarin is the lingua franca and the sole official language of China, so if you plan on doing business in China or traveling around the country, Mandarin is the language to learn.
The Backgrounds of Mandarin and Cantonese
Although specific regions will have their own dialect such as Hangzhou and Beijing, they are still mutually intelligible amongst other Mandarin speakers.
Mandarin and Japanese, both Asian languages, are quite similar. (Mandarin is the official language of China—one of the many Chinese dialects.) Mandarin, however, gets its roots from both the Sino-Tibetan and Sinitic families. Mandarin is written not with letters, as English is, but with characters called Hanzi.
Linguists have split Chinese into somewhere between seven and ten main language groups—the largest being Mandarin (also known as Northern), Wu, Min, and Yue—and each group also has a number of sub-dialects.
So the answer is there isn't actually a difference between Chinese and Mandarin – Mandarin is a form of Chinese. What makes Mandarin stand out is that it's the official language of mainland China and Taiwan, with between 70 and 80 percent of the population speaking Mandarin as their primary language.
Given its long history and the isolation of the region in which it is spoken, Wenzhounese is so unusual in its phonology that it has the reputation of being the least comprehensible dialect for an average Mandarin speaker.
The close correlation between the two languages, where the Vietnamese language contains more than 65% of the Sino-Vietnamese words (which is borrowed from Chinese), has led to the similarity in pronunciation in both languages at the character and word levels.
Are Vietnamese and Chinese mutually intelligible? Vietnamese and any Chinese dialect are not mutually intelligible. Despite the adoption of Chinese script in Vietnam in the past, they are still two completely different languages in two different families.
Cantonese and Vietnamese are not related languages at all and they aren't mutually intelligible in the slightest. The similar vocab and phonology is due to extensive Chinese influence on Vietnamese (from various Sinitic varieties in different time periods) and both Cantonese and Vietnamese having Kra-Dai substrates.
Arabic is a language most Mandarin speakers will find challenging. Its writing system is an abjad, which functions very differently from both Chinese characters and the English alphabet because it uses letters to represent consonants but not all vowels, and it uses a cursive script, so letters combine and change forms.
Among the major or “big” languages in the world stage, I would say that Russian and Arabic are probably the most challenging for Chinese native speakers to learn.
Cantonese is by far the more challenging of the two languages, particularly for a beginning Chinese language learner. This is because there are more tones used in Cantonese (Cantonese uses up to nine tones, whereas Mandarin only uses four).
Mandarin Chinese
Interestingly, the hardest language to learn is also the most widely spoken native language in the world. Mandarin Chinese is challenging for a number of reasons. First and foremost, the writing system is extremely difficult for English speakers (and anyone else) accustomed to the Latin alphabet.
Korean and Japanese might be the easiest languages for a native Chinese speaker to learn. While Korean and Japanese belong to a different language family from Chinese, centuries of cultural exchange have filled Korean and Japanese with Chinese vocabulary, in fact, 60% of Korean vocabulary has Chinese roots.
One of the biggest challenges of learning Chinese is mastering the pronunciation. Unlike English, Chinese is a tonal language, which means that the meaning of a word can change depending on the tone used to pronounce it. Chinese has four main tones: flat, rising, falling then rising, and falling.
Many people are curious about how difficult Japanese is compared to Chinese – a language that many learners have difficulty mastering. Compared to Chinese, Japanese does have its own set of complexities and challenges but overall, it's considered easier for beginners.
It takes about 4-7 years (roughly 2200 to 4000 hours) to become fluent in every aspect of the language, if you spend at least an hour and a half to study every day. However, it's quite common for learners to become more fluent in some areas than others depending on how they allotted their study time.