Chinese (汉语/漢語 Hànyǔ) or Sinitic is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family, consisting of hundreds of local language varieties, many of which are not mutually intelligible. The differences are at least as great as within the Romance languages, with variation particularly strong in the more rugged southeast. These varieties have been classified into seven to ten groups, the largest being Mandarin (e.g. Beijing dialect), Wu (e.g. Shanghainese), Min (e.g. Taiwanese Hokkien), and Yue (e.g.