identification of the varieties of Chinese

Chinese forms part of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. About one-fifth of the people in the world speak some variety of Chinese as their native language. Internal diversity in Chinese, with respect to grammar, vocabulary, and syntax, is comparable to the Romance languages, and greater than the North Germanic languages and East Slavic languages. However, owing to China's sociopolitical and cultural situation, whether these variants should be known as languages or dialects is a subject of ongoing debate. Some people call Chinese a language and its subdivisions dialects, while others call Chinese a language family and its subdivisions languages.
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