All of China uses the same character system, and there are over 20,000 characters currently being used. The average person will encounter about 8,000 of them in their lifetime. In addition, China also has a pinyin system, where the pronunciation of the character is written above it, which is used in children's books and things for people learning the language. 

However, there are over 100 dialects of Chinese, and the two most well-known are Cantonese and Mandarin. The latter is the official language of China, and is spoken in the north of the nation, while the former is spoken in its south and Hong Kong. 

I totally loved this comic. xD I was trying hard not to laugh while I was at work haha

A question for you, in the US, what is the most common language spoken amongst Chinese families and communities?

I also loved this comic!

... I might have saved it.

China has the easy characters XD Simplified. Lucky!  XD

Ni hao ma! That should be Mandarin for Hello, how are you....I hope.  Loved the cartoon. I love languages and try to pick up at least a few words from any friend I have who speaks a different language. I can say "kiss my butt" in Gaelic (haha ^^), say hello, thank you, and good night in Chinese, and good night in Greek.  I'm loving this Worlds Fair!

Small Lady wrote:

A question for you, in the US, what is the most common language spoken amongst Chinese families and communities?

It's hard to say, actually. Historically, a lot of the early Chinese immigrants to the US (i.e. for the Gold Rush and to build the Transcontinental Railroad) were from Southern China, and so Cantonese is more commonly spoken in the areas with a long history of Chinese immigrants. Growing up in Northern California, you can definitely hear a lot of Canto spoken in San Francisco and in its China Town area. But where I grew up, in the East Bay, Mandarin was more commonly heard, due to more recent immigrants from Mainland China and Taiwan.

Speaking of the Chinese language, my own family speaks four different dialects: Beijing-nese (aka "the official" version of Mandarin), Shanghai-nese, Suzhou-nese, and Ningbo-nese. The last three are all variants of the Wu dialect, and are spoke in the respective cities they get their names from. All three are also from roughly the same geographic region in China (Zhejiang and Jiangsu province, along the central coast line of China). As a non-Wu speaker, it's very hard for me to understand what my family is talking about when they speak their non-Mandarin dialects. As far as I can tell, the various Wu dialects are fairly intelligible to one another, however they are still quite distinct from one another. My maternal grandpa (who speaks Suzhou-nese) always like to say that "you'd rather have an argument with someone from Suzhou than talk to a person from Ningbo". The idea is that the Ningbo dialect is harsh sounding, while the Suzhou dialect is soft and nice to listen to (funny thing is, my maternal grandma is from Ninbo ;p)

Oh, one more thing about Chinese: it comes in two flavors. You heard that right. There's "traditional" Chinese, and then there's "simplified" Chinese. Traditional Chinese, as its name implies, is the way Chinese was traditionally written, going back many centuries. It's used most commonly nowadays in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and in many areas where there's a Chinese diaspora. Simplified Chinese was created in Mainland China in the 1950s to encourage literacy (just by looking at Chinese characters you can imagine how tough it is trying to memorize all these different characters >_<), and is the official version of Chinese used and taught today in Mainland China.

Some examples of traditional vs. simplified Chinese include:
horse: (trad.)馬 vs (simp.) 马
sun: (trad.) 陽 vs. (simp.) 阳
protect: (trad.) 護 vs (simp.) 护
twin/pair: (trad.) 雙 vs (simp.) 双

There's a bit of an argument over whether simplifying the language is a good thing or not. Some feel that simplifying Chinese dilutes its historical and cultural heritage, while others say the Chinese writing system is too complicated, and it should be made more accessible and easier to learn. Generally, people who were taught one version will have trouble reading the other version because many characters are so radically different between the two sets of scripts. A lot of printed Chinese media in the US, like Chinese language newspapers, tend to be in traditional Chinese, but in recent years I've also started to notice local newspapers using simplified Chinese, perhaps to reflect the increase in Mainland Chinese immigrants.

Thanks for the extra info! I have little to no knowledge of China's languages so it was interesting to read.

Over 100 dialects. That is intimidating wow. That's incredible.

Song about friendship we learned in my class in Taiwan. I find it amusing to watch since there were students from all over struggling to pronounce Chinese Characters correctly. Spain, Scotland, French, Indonesia, and Me (US)

The language is certainly fascinating.

Small Lady: Most commonly spoken in America is Mandarin. 

mangaka-chan: Thank you! I'm sorry that I couldn't go into so much detail in here or that I've neglected my threads...

That comic made me giggle xD Thank you for sharing, viola! I couldn't imagine having over 100 dialect O.o