Language or dialect. When does a dialect become a language? The predominant language in China, known as Hanyu, is divided into seven major language groups ( Mandarin, Wu, Yue, Min, Xiang, Hakka, Gan). Standard Chinese ( known in China as Putonghua), a form of Mandarin Chinese, is the official national spoken language for the mainland. However, China has 299 living languages listed at Ethnologue. Mandarin, Cantonese, and Taiwanese are often described as “dialects” of something called Chinese. A Mandarin-speaker can no…