Chinese is indeed a member of the Sino-Tibetan language family. This is the largest language family in the world, with over 400 languages spoken by nearly 1.4 billion people.
It's important to note that "Chinese" is a broad term encompassing many dialects and languages, all related but with varying degrees of mutual intelligibility.
Here's a breakdown:
* Sino-Tibetan family: The broad family, including languages like Chinese, Tibetan, Burmese, and many others.
* Sinitic languages: A sub-branch within the Sino-Tibetan family, containing the various languages and dialects commonly referred to as "Chinese."
* Standard Mandarin: The official language of mainland China, based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin.
So, while "Chinese" is a diverse group of languages, they all belong to the same family, connected by their common linguistic ancestry.