Besides China, which other countries use Chinese as their mother tongue?

Chinese is one of the six common languages in the world and has always been the most populous language. 1400 million people, that is to say, at least one out of every five people on the earth speaks Chinese (the second is Spanish, with a population of 399 million; The third place is the English-speaking population of 335 million.

Only two countries in the world speak Chinese as their mother tongue, one is Singapore and the other is Suriname. In these two countries, Chinese has its own official status and is also the official language in law.

As we all know, during the Ming Dynasty, a large number of China people immigrated to Nanyang, which is now Southeast Asia. Due to the increase in the number of people in China, Chinese has become popular all over the world. People who use Chinese all over the world are mainly concentrated in Asian countries, such as Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Mongolia and Indonesia. There are many overseas Chinese and ethnic Chinese, many of whom are native speakers of Chinese.

For example, Singapore, an island country in the Straits of Malacca, has gathered a large number of China people. After the founding of Singapore, the number of Chinese is about 74%, that is, three out of four Singaporeans are Chinese.

74% of Chinese in Singapore mainly come from Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan and Fujian. In the1980s, many Chinese Singaporeans spoke their native dialects. What are the characteristics of southern dialects such as Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian and Zhejiang? Different sounds in ten miles? Dialects are so different that it is almost difficult to communicate. Therefore, in order to unite the Chinese community, the Singapore government has been promoting Putonghua in the north to eliminate language barriers within the Chinese community. So far, young Chinese in Singapore can speak standard Mandarin.

Unlike Mandarin, the Singapore government has always used English as its first language. The Singapore government requires all government agencies, university campuses and public places to communicate in English.

If you travel to Singapore today, you can communicate with Singaporeans in Chinese without any obstacles, but according to a survey, the proportion of Chinese families in Singapore who use English as their first language is rising rapidly.

Singapore not only regards Chinese as the official language, but also promotes and popularizes the use of simplified characters. For inexplicable reasons, there are many Chinese in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Brunei and other Southeast Asian countries, as well as many Chinese newspapers and periodicals.

In addition, in the northeast corner of South America, Suriname, a country near the north of Brazil, is a small country with a population of only 550,000, with Chinese accounting for 3%, mainly Hakkas. Surinam has always used Hakka as its official language, and it is the only country except China and Singapore that uses Chinese as its official language. The main ethnic groups in Suriname are Indians, Creoles and descendants of Indians. Because there are many Hakka immigrants, there are only about 10 thousand people in Suriname. The existence of these Hakkas also makes Chinese a popular language.