Group of East Asian analytic languages and a major branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family
Also known as Chinese languages · Sinitic languages
15 statements · 13% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations
8 identifiers linking Sinitic across the web's reference databases
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0
The Sinitic languages, often synonymous with the Chinese languages, are a group of East Asian analytic languages that constitute a major branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is frequently proposed that there is a primary split between the Sinitic languages and the rest of the family. This view is rejected by some researchers but has found phylogenetic support among others. The Macro-Bai languages, whose classification is difficult, may be an offshoot of Old Chinese and thus also Sinitic; otherwise, Sinitic is defined only by the many varieties of Chinese unified by a shared linguistic evolution and writing system, and use of the term "Sinitic" may reflect the linguistic view that the Chinese language constitutes a family of distinct languages, rather than variants of a single language.
1 linked to Sinitic in Wikidata