因为中国有很长的历史嘛.

因为中国很大~ 欧洲还有那么多种语言呢~因为欧洲也很大~一个UK都有好几种语言呢~

hello, good question. 1st, but for the Qing emperor 2000 years back, there might have not been a China, but many smaller countries like wu, yue. (like hungary, austria etc of europe), they kept their own languages(from the same family) and then its not hard to understand there are so many dielacts. they just sound different, but the grammar vocab are almost same. the great example is we share the characters. if norway and sweden had complex hieroglyph like china does, they would probably be same. just sounds a bit different, but the essenc is same. I hope i made myself understood!

because China is a large country,and Chinese is come from hieroglyph,not as English is a alphabetic writing,and in ancient China people in different area do not have much communication,so it difficult for people to speak with one dialect,especially for people lived in distance area.

because China is HUGE.....and people tend to adapt the language to their subcultures etc....... thanks to Emperor Chin though... if it weren't for him... there might be many languages rather than many dialects in China today...ahaaaaa~