Standard Mandarin

Standard Mandarin, or Standard Chinese, known by various names to native speakers, is the official modern Chinese spoken language used in mainland China and Taiwan, and is one of the four official languages of Singapore. The phonology of Standard Mandarin is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin, a large and diverse group of Chinese dialects spoken across northern and southwestern China. The vocabulary is largely drawn from this group of diale... more

Standard Mandarin, or Standard Chinese, known by various names to native speakers, is the official modern Chinese spoken language used in mainland China and Taiwan, and is one of the four official languages of Singapore. The phonology of Standard Mandarin is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin, a large and diverse group of Chinese dialects spoken across northern and southwestern China. The vocabulary is largely drawn from this group of dialects. The grammar is standardized to the body of modern literary works written in Vernacular Chinese, which in practice follows the same tradition of the Mandarin dialects with some notable exceptions. As a result, Standard Mandarin itself is usually just called "Mandarin" in non-academic, everyday usage. However, linguists use "Mandarin" to refer to the entire language. This convention is adopted in this article. Standard Mandarin is officially known In other parts of the world, the three names are used interchangeably to varying degrees,... less