The Chinese ethnic language is a complicated system with a large number of languages and distinctive differences among dialects. The statistical results of the Chinese languages are quite different in Chinese and international academic circles.This paper, based on the case study, intends to make a comprehensive description of the different criteria on language classification, identification and dialect division used by Chinese scholars and international organizations, so as to make an objective analysis and evaluation on these standards. The paper fi nds that there are some similarities in terms of language classifi cation criteria, that is, the international organizations adopt “language group identity” and “lexical similarity” to distinguish different languages while Chinese scholars use “ethnicity” and “cognate words”. However, in terms of practical application, the standard of language intelligibility and language recognition is not operable, which makes the Chinese language number released by Ethnologue subject to criticism.
