A map of Chinese dialects

[ccyjie]

A map of Chinese dialects.

[xiaocai]

What happened to 海南？

[WestTexas]

Ehh Uighur isn't on the map, also some of the little spots in the south aren't labeled and apparently Hainan Island was hit by several nuclear missles

[OneEye]

OP, the map is of Sino-Tibetan languages, not of "Chinese dialects". Yue, Wu, Min, etc. are not dialects, but separate languages in their own right. If you want to translate 方言 into English, topolect is a more accurate word than dialect, but most English speakers won't be familiar with that word unless they have some background in linguistics. I also take issue with the implication that the Mandarin/官話 group is "Chinese", but Yue (Cantonese being one variety of Yue), Wu, Xiang, Min, Hakka, and Gan are not. Interesting that Jin is on the map but not in the list.

WestTexas, Uyghur is not a Sino-Tibetan language, but a Turkic one.

[Hofmann]

Any Tibetan language is not a Chinese whateverlect. But cool story bro.

[Lost in Mong Kok]

Doing a bit of searching there are a couple of different maps that may be of interest.

Some are maps of Chinese languages and languages in China:

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chinese/maps/maps.html

Also this which looks a lot like a geological map, and needs some translation:

http://robertlindsay.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/chinese-language-map1.jpg

[civic94]

the map doesnt seem right.. i thought sichuan had their own dialect, but it just says mandarin on the map.

[OneEye]

Yes, it's a dialect of Mandarin.

[civic94]

Yes, it's a dialect of Mandarin.

can they understand each other if a mandarin speaking person talks to a sichuan person?

how many total dialects are there anyways? 400-500?

[Hofmann]

Theoretically, infinity.

[imron]

Given that the total population of the earth is significantly less than infinity and could never reach such a value, and that dialects refer to a variety of a language spoken in a region or by a particular group of language speakers, I think your theory needs some adjustment :-)

[Goujian]

http://www.kiangnanese.com/html/maps/2009/0330/32.html

This is reasonably more accurate.

[陳德聰]

The second one in particular seems pretty good if we're trying to get a picture of "Chinese" language groups.

Map lists 官、閩、晉、贛、徽、吳、湘、客家、粵、and 平 in different colours which is very nice, especially with the breakdown of 官 and 閩 into respective areas which nicely correspond to 方言

Edit: as to infinite dialects, assuming we never go extinct I don't see how that theory needs adjusting at all.