People talk about learning Chinese as if there is only one language to learn, in fact there are literally hundreds of different versions of Chinese. In theory that could make it hard to decide which version of Chinese you should learn but in practice you really only have a couple of options. Normally Mandarin and Cantonese are the only languages taught to foreigners with Mandarin being by far the most popular.

Chinese Language Types

China has dozens of different dialects, in reality they are actually different languages since most of the dialects cannot be understood by speakers of other dialects. This has occurred because over the centuries the Chinese have tended to remain near to their homes and have not interacted with people who lived far away. This has resulted in a number of different languages. It is similar to the way that different languages developed in Europe, most of them developed from Latin to become distinct languages. The same has happened in China, all of the dialects developed from what was once a common Chinese language over many centuries.

Mandarin is by far the most common dialect of Chinese that is spoken today. It is primarily spoken in the north and the southwest part of China an is the official language of the country. When people refer to the Chinese language they are usually referring to Mandarin. When you're traveling to China, Mandarin is your best friend! ;-)

The second most common dialect spoken in China is Wu which is spoken in Shanghai as well as well as in a few other provinces. There are actually dozens of different dialects of Wu and they are not all understandable to other speakers. A lot of these dialects developed in the isolated mountain regions and are unique to that region and can't be understood by other speakers of Wu. Normally when somebody refers to Wu they are talking about the Shanghai dialect, but it should be kept in mind that there are dozens of others.

Cantonese is the dialect that is most commonly spoken in the southeast of the country, including Hong Kong. It is also the dialect that is spoken by most of the overseas Chinese population, this is because most Chinese Ex pats come from Hong Kong and Guangdong in the southeast of the country. Like most of the other Chinese dialects there are several regional variations of Cantonese and not all speakers can understand each other.

Min is the dialect that is spoken in Taiwan as well as in places like Malaysia and the Philippines that have large populations that emigrated from Taiwan. It is also fairly commonly spoken in the US since many people from Taiwan have moved to the States. As you would expect there are number of variations of Min as well, in fact it is the most diverse of all the Chinese dialects because of the number of different places that it is spoken.