Chinese is a language spoken by about 1.4 billion people, primarily in China and Taiwan. It is also spoken by significant communities in many other countries. Chinese belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family and is written in characters known as Hanzi in Chinese and Kanji in Japanese. There are several regional variations of Chinese, including Mandarin, which is the most spoken variety and is the official language of China and Taiwan, and Cantonese, which is spoken in the Guangdong province of China and in Hong Kong.
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is the most widely spoken language in the world today, with approximately 1.5 billion people speaking it as a native language. English is also the official language of many countries, such as the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. English is also commonly used as a lingua franca in other countries, such as India, Pakistan, and South Africa.