We all know that there are totally 56 nationalities in China. But do you know how many languages spoken by so many peoples in China? Han people, Hui nationality and Man nationality all speak Mandarin Chinese while other 12 groups have their own writings such as Mongoloid, Tibetan, Uyghur people, Kazak people, Kirgiz people, Yi nationality and Dai people as well as Lahu people, Jingpo people and XIbo people and so on. Most of those writings have long history. And the writing used by Mongoloid people is a kind of alphabetic writing in vertical direction, which is popular in Mongolia area.
During the process when the Chinese language teachers teach Mandarin language, they might tell you that the Mongolian living in Xinjiang area also use a kind of alphabetic writing on the basis of the popular Mongolian writing and with the features of dialect. Yunnan province is also characterized by the various ethnic groups, one of which is Dai people. However, the point you need to know is that four kinds of Dai languages are used in different areas even though they are all Dai people. The four writings are Daile writing, Daibeng writing, Daina writing and Jinping Dai writing.
According to the information mentioned above, we can see that Mongolian use two kinds of languages and Dai people use four languages. Both Hui nationality and Man people speak Chinese language. In all, all of the 15 nationalities speak 17 kinds of languages. In addition, there are many people in Lisu group believe in Christian. If the students who come to learn to speak Chinese in Yunnan have ever seen the writing of Lisu people, they might find it is really strange which is composed of the capitalized Latin letters and letters of perversion.
In addition, in the northeast of Yunnan province, some of the people who believe in Christian use a kind of writing named as Miao Wen which is composed of the initial consonants, vowels and tones. Wa writing is used by Wa people who believe in Christian. Some people of Zhuang people, Bai people and Yao people also use the Zhuang writing, Bai writing and Yao writing under the influence of Mandarin Chinese. In all, before the foundation of the New China, there were 21 peoples used their own languages and the total number of the languages reached 24. Some of languages were applied but then abolished such as Tujue writying, Huihu writing and Xixia writing.