The Chinese language is the language that has the largest number of speakers, more than 1.2 billion, throughout world.

    Chinese is spoken by more people than any other language in the world. Since estimates of the current population ofChinaare only approximate, figures for the number of speakers of Chinese must likewise be approximate. An educated guess would be about 1.2 billion in the People's Republic ofChina, to which must be added another 20 million onTaiwan, 5 million inHong Kong, 4 million inMalaysia, l.75 million inSingapore, one million inVietnam, and lesser numbers in other countries including theUnited States. Thus Chinese has more than twice the number of speakers of English, though of course it lacks the universality of English and is spoken by few people not of Chinese origin. Chinese has been an official language of the United Nations since the founding of the organization in 1945.

    Though Chinese has many dialects, Mandarin, based on the pronunciation ofPeking, is considered the standard and is spoken by about two-thirds of the population.

    Chinese is a tonal language, meaning different tones or intonations distinguish words that otherwise are pronounced identically. The four Chinese tones are (I) high level; (2) high rising; (3) low rising; (4) high falling to low.