How the language atlas shifts

One theory about how dialects came into being suggests that it was Northern Chinese who passed on the language to the South, which blended it with local speech.

There has been general agreement on the categorization of Chinese dialects since the Language Atlas of China was jointly compiled by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Australian Academy of the Humanities, in 1987.

In general, Chinese dialects are divided into Mandarin Chinese and non-Mandarin Chinese. Mandarin has the most speakers as the speaking region spreads from Northeast China to the Southwest.