Britannica Sources used in this answer

Why can Chinese and Arabic be counted as either single languages or groups of spoken varieties?

Created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.

Three women sit together outdoors, smiling and laughing as they talk, with trees softly blurred in the background. — Language Spoken language is just one type of language, which has been defined in many different ways across history.

The distinction between a single language and a group of related varieties is often complex, as the criteria for mutual intelligibility are relative rather than absolute. In the cases of Chinese and Arabic, these labels are applied to groups of spoken varieties that are frequently mutually unintelligible, yet they are often grouped together due to shared literary traditions and sociopolitical factors.12345

Chinese

While popularly referred to as dialects, the various spoken forms of Chinese are typically classified by scholars as separate languages because they are mutually unintelligible. These varieties, such as Mandarin, Cantonese, and Wu, share a common logographic writing system that allows speakers of different varieties to communicate through text, even when their spoken forms differ significantly.46

Arabic

Arabic is similarly characterized by a divide between its written and spoken forms. Modern Standard Arabic serves as a unifying literary and formal medium, while the diverse spoken varieties—such as those of Egypt, Iraq, and North Africa—can be mutually unintelligible. The status of these varieties as a single language is deeply tied to cultural and religious identity, particularly through the Qur'an.35