Mandarin Chinese

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This article is about the entire group of Mandarin Chinese language varieties. For Standard
Mandarin, the official variety, see Standard Chinese. For the administrative language of China during
the Ming and Qing dynasties, see Mandarin (late imperial lingua franca).

Mandarin

官话; 官話; Guānhuà

Guānhuà (Mandarin)

written in Chinese characters

(simplified Chinese on the left, traditional Chinese on the right)

Region Most of northern and southwestern China (see

alsoStandard Chinese)

Native speakers 910 million (2015)[1]

200 million L2 (no date)[1]

Language family Sino-Tibetan

 Sinitic
 Mandarin

Early forms Old Chinese

 Middle Chinese
 Old Mandarin

Standard forms Standard Chinese

(Putonghua, Guoyu)

Dialects  Northeastern
  Beijing
 Ji–Lu
 Jiao–Liao
 Lower Yangtze
 Central Plains
 Lan–Yin
 Southwestern
 Jin (sometimes a separate group)
 Huizhou (disputed)

Writing system  Chinese characters(Traditional, Simplified)

 Latin (Pinyin)
 Zhuyin
 Arabic (Xiao'erjing)
 Cyrillic (Dungan)
 Mainland Chinese Braille
 Taiwanese Braille
 Two-Cell Chinese Braille

Signed forms Wenfa Shouyu[2]

Language codes

ISO 639-3 cmn

Glottolog mand1415 [3]

Linguasphere 79-AAA-b

Mandarin area in China and Taiwan, with Jin (sometimes treated as a

separate group) in light green
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 Mandarin Chinese

Simplified Chinese 官话

Traditional Chinese 官話

Literal meaning officials' speech

showTranscriptions

Northern Chinese

Simplified Chinese 北方话

Traditional Chinese 北方話

Literal meaning Northern speech

showTranscriptions

Mandarin (/ˈmændərɪn/ ( listen); simplified Chinese: 官话; traditional Chinese: 官話

; pinyin: Guānhuà; literally: "speech of officials") is a group of related varieties of Chinese spoken
across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis
of Standard Mandarin or Standard Chinese. Because Mandarin originated in North China and most
Mandarin dialects are found in the north, the group is sometimes referred to as the Northern
dialects (北方话; běifānghuà). Many local Mandarin varieties are not mutually intelligible.
Nevertheless, Mandarin is often placed first in lists of languages by number of native speakers (with
nearly a billion).