No other language is spoken as widely around the globe than Chinese. Conservatively speaking, one of every five people worldwide speaks Chinese. Beyond the fact that there are more people speaking Chinese than any other language; it is one of six official languages of the United Nations. Chinese is both used in formal meetings as well as for documentation. With China emerging as a major economic superpower in the last part of the century, Chinese language has begun to make its foray into the developed countries of the West. Claiming an international audience, Chinese is fast becoming one of most popular languages of exchange even on the web.
Chinese language stereotype
One stereotype that the West held about China was that the official language of China is Cantonese. There was a legitimate ground for such misunderstanding. Those earliest Chinese who migrated to other countries were primarily from the Southern coastal provinces like Guangdong (formally known to the West as Canton) where Cantonese was the widely spoken dialect.