Language code: zh
Technical information about ISO 639 language code zh
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The table below provides technical details for the Chinese language, designated by the zh code from the ISO 639-1 standard.
| Code |
|
| Standard | |
| Name | Official Chinese Native 中文 |
| Family | Sinitic |
| Scripts | |
| Text direction | Left-to-Right |
| Plural rules | |
| Language varieties | MandarinWuYueMinXiangGanHakkaJinHuiPinghua |
| Related languages | TibetanBurmeseYi (Nuosu)QiangKaren |
| Key facts | Approximately one in six people on Earth speaks a variety of Chinese as their first languageChinese characters number over 50,000, though literacy requires knowledge of about 3,000The language is tonal, with Mandarin having four tones plus a neutral toneGrammatical inflection is minimal—word order and particles convey tense and aspectThe oldest known Chinese written records date back over 3,000 years to oracle bones of the Shang dynasty |
| Sample phrase | 你好，你好吗？ |
| Character encodings | GBK, GB2312, GB18030, Big5, Big5-HKSCS, UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32 |
| Supported in Localizely |
Chinese belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family, specifically to the Sinitic subgroup. It is the official language of China and the most widely spoken native language in the world. It is written using Simplified (Hans) and Traditional (Hant) scripts. It is estimated that there are around 1,350,000,000 native speakers worldwide.
Language presence globally
Speakers
1.4B
*The graph shows a rough estimate of Chinese speakers in countries where it is an official or minority language.
Related locale codes
zh-Hans – Chinese (Simplified)
zh-Hans-CN – Chinese (Simplified, China)
zh-Hans-HK – Chinese (Simplified, Hong Kong)
zh-Hans-MO – Chinese (Simplified, Macao)
zh-Hans-SG – Chinese (Simplified, Singapore)
zh-Hant – Chinese (Traditional)
zh-Hant-HK – Chinese (Traditional, Hong Kong)
zh-Hant-MO – Chinese (Traditional, Macao)
zh-Hant-TW – Chinese (Traditional, Taiwan)
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Documentation
- What is Localizely?
- Getting started
- Localization workflow
- Translation editor
- Flutter Over-the-Air updates
- Flutter In-Context Editing
- Project branching
- Professional translation services
- Machine Translation
- AI Translation
- Translation Memory
- Glossary
- Reports and Statistics
- Figma integration
- AWS S3 integration
- GitHub integration
- GitLab integration
- Bitbucket integration
- CLI
- Configuration file
- Supported file formats
- Language & Country Codes
- Referral Program
- FAQ
Resources
- What is Localizely?
- Getting started
- Localization workflow
- Translation editor
- Flutter Over-the-Air updates
- Flutter In-Context Editing
- Project branching
- Professional translation services
- Machine Translation
- AI Translation
- Translation Memory
- Glossary
- Reports and statistics
- Figma integration
- AWS S3 integration
- GitHub integration
- GitLab integration
- Bitbucket integration
- CLI
- Configuration file
- Supported file formats
- Language & Country Codes
- Referral Program
- I18N Questions
- FAQ