 "regional/areal speech") is "dialect", but the language situation in China is said to be uniquely complex.In the "dialect" sense of English dialects, Chinese has Mandarin dialects, yet "fangyan" also means "non-Mandarin languages, mutually unintelligible regional varieties of Chinese", such as Cantonese and Hakka.Some linguists like John DeFrancis prefer the translation "topolect", which are very similar to independent languages.