its hard to compare the two. "Chinese" is more of a language family than a language, even within Mandarin there are many dialects. it wasnt until the 1900s when the Qing dynasty attempted to standardize an official "Chinese language". before then, someone from northern China and someone from southern China likely wouldnt be able to understand each other. i dont know any Chinese language btw, im just kinda amateurly interested in linguistics
The language/dialect divide doesn't actually exist in linguistics, which has long since moved on to calling things "varieties" instead. So, you have multiple varieties of Chinese just like you have multiple varieties of Arabic or multiple varieties of Romance.
its hard to compare the two. "Chinese" is more of a language family than a language, even within Mandarin there are many dialects. it wasnt until the 1900s when the Qing dynasty attempted to standardize an official "Chinese language". before then, someone from northern China and someone from southern China likely wouldnt be able to understand each other. i dont know any Chinese language btw, im just kinda amateurly interested in linguistics
The language/dialect divide doesn't actually exist in linguistics, which has long since moved on to calling things "varieties" instead. So, you have multiple varieties of Chinese just like you have multiple varieties of Arabic or multiple varieties of Romance.
interesting! thanks for the info!