Sinitic languages
group of East Asian analytic languages and a major branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family
The Sinitic languages (simplified Chinese: 汉语族; traditional Chinese: 漢語族; pinyin: Hànyǔ zú) are a group of East Asian analytic languages that constitute a major branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is frequently proposed that there is a primary split between the Sinitic languages and the rest of the family (the Tibeto-Burman languages). This view is rejected by some researchers but has found phylogenetic support among others. The Macro-Bai languages, whose classification is difficult, may be an offshoot of Old Chinese and thus also Sinitic; otherwise, Sinitic is defined only by the many varieties of Chinese unified by a shared linguistic evolution and writing system (i.e. Written Chinese), and use of the term "Sinitic" may reflect the linguistic view that the Chinese language constitutes a family of distinct languages, rather than variants of a single language.
Population
Over 91% of the Chinese population speaks a Sinitic language, of whom about three-quarters speak a Mandarin variety. Estimates of the number of global speakers of Sinitic branches as of 2018–2019, both native and non-native, are listed below: Note that the numbers are uncertain due to uncertainty in the population estimates of China.
Languages
Dialectologist Jerry Norman estimated that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible Sinitic languages. They form a dialect continuum in which differences generally become more pronounced as distances increase, though there are also some sharp boundaries. The Sinitic languages can be divided into Macro-Bai languages and Chinese languages, and the following is one of many potential ways of subdividing these languages.
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