Mandarin is not the only language that Chinese people speak. In fact, it only became the official language in the 1930s and each region/community has its own dialect. The hundreds of Chinese dialects are commonly regrouped under ten categories: Mandarin, Cantonese, Jin, Wu, Hui, Min, Ping, Hakka, Gan, and Xiang. Each group also has a number of sub-dialects. It is also worth noting that the concept of a “dialect” is different from accents as commonly known in the English language, though accents do arise within dialects due to regional differences.
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