Names used by its speakers (Endonyms): Zhōngwén (中文); Hànyǔ (汉语 in simplified characters, 漢語 in traditional characters)
Native speakers (estimated): 990 million (Mandarin only); 1.39 billion including all varieties
Total speakers, including second-language (estimated): 1.2 billion (Mandarin only)
Where it’s spoken: Chinese is collectively a group of languages spoken originally by people of the Han Chinese ethnic majority. Mandarin Chinese is by far the most widely spoken version of Chinese and is the official language of the People’s Republic of China as well as the de facto primary language of Taiwan, though in both countries there are also millions of native speakers of non-Mandarin dialects. In Singapore, Mandarin is one of four official languages (alongside English, Malay, and Tamil). While Chinese is co-official in Hong Kong (with English) and Macau (with Portuguese), the predominant form of the language in both those special regions is Cantonese.
Elsewhere in Asia, several different dialects are spoken within Malaysia’s large Chinese community, though Mandarin predominates. Mandarin is also the de facto working language of Wa State, a region of Myanmar (Burma) along the border with China. Thailand has the next highest percentage of ethnic Chinese (14%) after Singapore and Malaysia, and indeed the largest Chinese community worldwide outside of China and Taiwan, but they are highly assimilated and overwhelmingly speak Thai rather than any version of Chinese.
Waves of emigration have brought the Chinese diaspora to nearly every part of the globe. The largest community outside Asia is found in the United States, where there are 5 million Americans of Chinese descent, over 3 million of whom report speaking one of the Chinese languages, making it the third most common home language (after Spanish). Earlier generations of immigrants mostly spoke Cantonese or Toisanese (another dialect from South China), while Mandarin has become increasingly predominant with recent arrivals. In terms of non-English languages for study in the US, while Chinese doesn’t come close to the popularity of Spanish or French, it has been reported as the sixth most commonly studied—after German, Japanese, and either Latin (in high schools) or ASL (in universities).
In Canada, about 5% of the population is of Chinese heritage, concentrated primarily around Toronto and Vancouver, and representing the second-largest group of Asian Canadians. Chinese language (all types, but probably more Cantonese than Mandarin) is reported as the most common mother tongue after English and French.
While Australians of Chinese descent may number slightly fewer than Canadians, by percentage of population (6%) their numbers are higher than any other country beyond Asia. The majority of Chinese Australians report speaking Chinese at home, predominantly Mandarin, making it the second most widely spoken native language besides English.
Smaller, though still significant ethnic Chinese communities also exist in South Korea, Japan, France, the UK, Italy, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, and New Zealand; the extent of spoken Chinese in each these countries varies widely.