In a busy Chinatown, a foreigner begins switching between four Chinese dialects. Each change triggers surprise and disbelief. Locals stop to listen and test the fluency. Conversations jump between ...

Almost two years before Wong Kar-wai’s period drama “Blossoms” brought Shanghainese back into the public spotlight, 23-year-old Hu Shiyang began writing her debut novel in the same dialect. Titled ...

Alibaba has launched a 100 million-yuan ($15 million) initiative aimed at preserving Chinese dialects, the e-commerce giant’s AI Labs division announced Wednesday, according to a report by The Beijing ...

BEIJING — China is launching an aggressive campaign to promote Mandarin, saying that 85% of its citizens will use the national language by 2025. The move appears to put threatened Chinese regional ...

Regarding Hugo Restall’s review of “Kingdom of Characters” (Bookshelf, March 2): The Beijing dialect, known in the West as Mandarin, was voted by the Kuomintang to be the guoyu, or national dialect, ...

In the UK, studies have repeatedly found evidence of accentism. Prejudice based on someone’s way of speaking can affect people in the classroom, the office and beyond. Our research of dialects and ...

THERE ARE several reasons why “Aiqing Shenhua”, a new film released on Christmas Eve in Chinese cinemas, has surprised movie buffs. One is that the movie, whose English title is “B for Busy”, is a ...

What does it mean to learn the Chinese language? Schools across the globe have generally presumed a consistent, straightforward answer to this question: it would mean learning standard Mandarin, ...