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Language code: chi

Technical information about ISO 639 language code chi

Documentation

The table below provides technical details for the Chinese language, designated by the chi code from the ISO 639-2 standard.

Code

chi (Bibliographic)

Name

Official

Chinese

Native

中文

Scripts
Han (Simplified variant)
Han (Traditional variant)
Text direction

Left-to-Right

Language varieties
MandarinWuYue (Cantonese)MinXiangGanHakkaJinHuizhouPinghua
Related languages
BurmeseTibetanYi (Nuosu)LisuKaren (S'gaw)
Key facts
Chinese writing uses logographic Han characters rather than an alphabetThe language is tonal—Standard Mandarin has four tones, while some dialects exceed eightChinese grammar is highly analytic, with minimal inflection and heavy reliance on word order and particlesThe basic sentence order is Subject-Verb-ObjectThe earliest attested Chinese texts are oracle-bone inscriptions from roughly 1200 BCE
Sample phrase

你好，你好吗？

Character encodings

GBK, GB2312, GB18030, Big5, Big5-HKSCS, UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32

Supported in Localizely

The Chinese language, identified by the code chi, falls under the 'Macrolanguage' category in terms of its scope and is classified as 'Living' by its type.

The ISO 639-2 standard offers two codes for the Chinese language: chi for bibliographic purposes and zho for terminology uses.

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