Mandarin

Huānyíng - Welcome

Mandarin is the major dialect of China both in terms of number of speakers (about 70 percent of the total population ) and political importance.The term Mandarin is an English translation of guān-huà 'official language', i.e., the dialect spoken in Běijīng.

Mandarin is the most widely spoken of all Chinese languages. It is used by 867 million people as a first language in a vast area of northern and southwestern mainland China. It is also spoken in Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mongolia, Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom, USA, and Viet Nam. The total number of first-language speakers of Mandarin world-wide is estimated to be around 873 million. In addition, it is used as a second language by another 178 million people (Ethnologue).

The Běijīng dialect was considered to be the standard language until the 1950s when the standard language became pŭtōnghuà 'common speech' in the People's Republic of China guóyŭ and 'national language' in Taiwan. The two differ slightly from each other in grammar and vocabulary, although both are based on the Běijīng dialect. One of the four official languages of Singapore, huáyŭ 'Chinese language', is also based on the Běijīng dialect but is somewhat different from both pŭtōnghuà and guóyŭ.

Standard Mandarin is the official language of the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China (Taiwan), and one of the official languages of Singapore.

Technically, both pŭtōnghuà and guóyŭ are based on the Beijing dialect. In reality, however, both versions of "school" Mandarin taught in the two countries are often quite different from the Mandarin that is spoken regionally, and both differ from the Beijing dialect in pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary.

Mandarin plays the role of a lingua franca in PRC, Taiwan, and Singapore, and is taught in schools to facilitate communication among people who speak a variety of mutually unintelligible languages and dialects. Since some of the other Chinese languages/dialects are not mutually intelligible with Mandarin, many Chinese have to learn it as a second language.

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