Motor speech disorders in Chinese

Abstract

Chinese, spoken by approximately 20% of the world’s population, is the most commonly spoken language in the world (Fung, 1990). There is some debate regarding whether varieties of spoken Chinese should be considered dialects or separate language. Here, we regard them as separate languages. The various languages of Chinese are considered united by a common written system, although this characterization is problematic for Cantonese, which has many colloquial expressions with no written form (Bauer & Benedict, 1997). In this chapter, we focus on two of the most common Chinese languages, Cantonese and Mandarin (Putonghua). Cantonese is spoken in Hong Kong, Southern China and many overseas Chinese communities. Mandarin, also known as Standard Chinese, is the official national language of China and Taiwan, and is one of the four official languages of Singapore.