The Sinitic languages (simplified Chinese: 汉语族; traditional Chinese: 漢語族; pinyin: Hànyǔ zú), often synonymous with the Chinese languages, are a group of East Asian analytic languages that constitute a major branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is frequently proposed that there is a primary split between the Sinitic languages and the rest of the family (the Tibeto-Burman languages). This view is rejected by some researchers but has found phylogenetic support among others. The Macro-Bai languages, whose classification is difficult, may be an offshoot of Old Chinese and thus Sinitic; otherwise, Sinitic is defined only by the many varieties of Chinese unified by a shared historical background, and usage of the term "Sinitic" may reflect the linguistic view that Chinese constitutes a family of distinct languages, rather than variants of a single language.

Over 91% of the Chinese population speaks a Sinitic language, of whom about three-quarters speak a Mandarin variety. Estimates of the number of global speakers of Sinitic branches as of 2018–2019, both native and non-native, are listed below: Note that the numbers are uncertain due to uncertainty in the population estimates of China.

Dialectologist Jerry Norman estimated that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible Sinitic languages. They form a dialect continuum in which differences generally become more pronounced as distances increase, though there are also some sharp boundaries. The Sinitic languages can be divided into Macro-Bai languages and Chinese languages, and the following is one of many potential ways of subdividing these languages. Some varieties, such as Shaozhou Tuhua, are hard to classify and thus are not included in the following briefs.

This is a language family first proposed by linguist Zhengzhang Shangfang, and was expanded to include Longjia and Luren. It likely split off from the rest of Sinitic during the Old Chinese period. The languages included are all considered minority languages in China and are spoken in the Southwest. The languages are:

All other Sinitic languages henceforth would be considered Chinese.

The Chinese branch of the family is classified into at least seven main families. These families are classified based on five main evolutionary criteria:

The varieties within one family may not be mutually intelligible with each other. For instance, Wenzhounese and Ningbonese are not highly mutually intelligible. The Language Atlas of China identifies ten groups:

with Jin, Hui, Pinghua, and Tuhua not part of the seven traditional groups.