How many Chinese dialects are there?
Putonghua / Mandarin spoken in China, is the official dialect. Guo yu/ Mandarin spoken in Taiwan, usually just translated as “Chinese”, when there’s no specifics. Tai yu / Taiwanese is a sub-branch of Minnan or southern Fujianese dialect, with combinations with words of Hakka & a few Cantonese words. Hui is not a spoken language, but a group name = “Muslims/Moslems”. Uygur is a spoken language. “Ping” could be a subdialect. There’s many subdialects and intermixes between dialects, and even sub-subdialects. There’s only 8-20 dialects. Not hundreds or thousands of dialects as exaggerated by most foreigners. Yue = Cantonese, spoken mostly in Guangdong province & Hong Kong, etc…, Wu = Shanghainese/Wenzhounese, Min = Fujianese / Taiwanese, Jin = status debated, could be under Mandarin or separate dialects, speakers in most of Shanxi, Xiang = spoken mostly in Hunan, Sichuan & Guangxi , Hakka = speakers are scattered across China, majority of group is around Guangzhou, etc…, Gan = spoken
