[TheCipher]

I always thought there were 4 Chinese tones (that I could hear anyway). Seems there are 8, and may well have been more in the past.

There is no "Chinese". There are dialects- Mandarin, Cantonese, etc. Mandarin - the official language of China - has 4 tones.

[muawiyah]

The Chinese languages constitute an immense “family’ of languages ~ whatever the “official” language is in Big China is irrelevant. It’s a vanity of the Communist party that they provide leadership in all matters to the Chinese speaking peoples worldwide ~ but that’s just pure CR*P.