Sinophone

Sinophone means Chinese-speaking, and as a regional term it names the world of people who speak at least one variety of Chinese. Writers use it in two senses. The narrow sense covers Chinese-speaking populations where Chinese is a minority language, leaving out mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. The wide sense covers all Chinese-speaking areas, including those where it is an official language, and is often rendered as the Sinophone world or Chinese-speaking world, consisting of Greater China and Singapore. Mandarin has over a billion speakers in total and is official in mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore, while Cantonese is official in Hong Kong and Macau and is widely spoken among overseas Chinese communities. The word was coined independently around 2005 by Geremie Barme and Shu-mei Shih, on the model of Francophone, and it is used in literary and cultural studies to separate writing in Chinese from Chinese literature as a national category.