Zhongwen

Zhongwen, written 中文, is the term used to refer to the Chinese language and its varieties, especially those spoken by Han Chinese. It encompasses both spoken forms and the logographic system used to write them. In contemporary contexts the term is often associated with Standard Chinese or Putonghua, as well as with literacy in Chinese characters.

Chinese writing relies on characters, logograms that typically encode morphemes rather than individual sounds. Thousands of characters exist; everyday use relies on several thousand. There are two main script forms: Traditional characters in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau; Simplified characters introduced in the mainland during the 20th century and also used in Singapore. Pinyin, a romanization system, is widely used for teaching pronunciation and for inputting Chinese on computers, while Zhuyin (Bopomofo) is used in Taiwan.

Chinese is an analytic, tonal language family. Most varieties share a common base of vocabulary and a basic subject–verb–object order, though grammar and tones differ. Mandarin uses four tones plus a neutral tone. Pronunciation features include initials and finals, and generally there is little inflection in morphology.

Dialect groups such as Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu, Min, Hakka, and Xiang form the broader Chinese language family. Mandarin is the most widely spoken and serves as the basis for Standard Chinese, the official language of the People's Republic of China and one of the official languages of Taiwan and Singapore. Mutual intelligibility between varieties is limited.

Historically, Chinese evolved from Old Chinese through Middle Chinese to modern varieties. Standard Chinese was codified in the 20th century, with efforts to unify pronunciation, vocabulary, and writing. Pinyin was adopted as the official romanization in mainland China in the 1950s; character simplification followed in the 1950s and 1960s.

Today Zhongwen is taught and studied worldwide as a language for communication, culture, and commerce, used in education, media, government, and everyday life across multiple countries.