2. How many people do they speak Chinese as their first language?

2. How many people do they speak Chinese as their first language?

>> An estimated 1.3 billion native speakers nowadays. But it’s important to know that usually when we talk about learning Chinese, it means Mandarin Chinese. According to some estimates, about 70% of Chinese-speaking population speak Mandarin as their first language, which is around 900 million people. Thus, some calculations : 1.3 billion – 900 million = 400 million. About 400 million Chinese people speak the other dialects (from 7 to 13 different groups).

numbers of first-language speakers
(picture from Wiki, resource from : Lewis, M. Paul; Simons, Gary F.; Fennig, Charles D., eds. (2015), Ethnologue: Languages of the World (Eighteenth ed.), Dallas, Texas: SIL International.)

>> It’s said that at the end of 2008 more than 40 million foreigners studying Chinese around the world. And because of its potential interest, we can say there are 100 million learners today and it will keep going up.  Will you be one of us?