Chinese language
Chinese (spoken: simplified Chinese: 汉语; traditional Chinese: 漢語; pinyin: Hànyǔ, written: 中文; Zhōngwén) is an umbrella term for all Sinitic languages, widely recognized as a collection of language varieties, spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China, as well as by various communities of the Chinese diaspora. Approximately 1.39 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak one of the varieties of Chinese as their first language.