What does that have to do with anything? We had one language since the Qin Dynasty.
This is particularly true in the case of Chinese ethnohistory. Discussing linguistic groups in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), for example, is particularly difficult because the government insists on maintaining the fiction that there is only one Chinese language, and that it is divided into a series of dialects.To argue otherwise would require government officials to recognize major ethnicdivisions with the dominant Han people, something Chinese officials have been extremely reluctant to do.
Most linguists argue, however, that the definition of ‘‘dialect’’ means that it is mutually intelligible by users of other ‘‘dialects’’ of the same language. The Chinese government claims that eight dialects of the language exist within the national boundaries: Mandarin, Wu, Jin, Gan, Xiang, Hakka, Yue, and Min. The problem with that definition, of course, is that none of these so-called dialects is mutually intelligible with the other. The people who speak them may very well be united by their Han* descent and their shared eclectic mix of Buddhist, Taoist,and Confucian religious beliefs, but they cannot understand one another’s spoken languages, which should render them members of different ethnic groups.
Complicating the issue even more is the fact that each of the Chinese languages possesses many dialects, and some of those dialects are not mutually intelligible to speakers of related dialects.At the same time, however, all Chinese languages share an unusual linguistic similarity. They cannot be mutually understood by different speakers, but they all employ the same written script, which is mutually readable.
Olson - An Ethnohistorical Dictionary China
There are so many groups and sub groups that it is a fascinating kaleidoscope.
