What exactly does “The Chinese language” mean? Does it mean Mandarin, or are other langs like Cantonese, Hakka, and Teochew included?
What exactly does “The Chinese language” mean? Does it mean Mandarin, or are other langs like Cantonese, Hakka, and Teochew included?
The difference between it being a rule and an exception depends on which side of the North/South dividing line a speaker is from. Generally, people from south and south-east of the Yangtze river speak languages whose most recent common ancestor is Middle Chinese and not Mandarin.
Here’s a map of the Sinitic languages and a map of the varieties of Mandarin.