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Mandarin language

Mandarin
官话; 官話; Guānhuà
Guanhua (vector version).svg
Guānhuà (Mandarin)
written in Chinese characters
(traditional Chinese on the left, simplified Chinese on the right)
Region Most of northern and southwestern China (see also Standard Chinese)
Native speakers
960 million (2010)
Early forms
Standard forms
Standard Chinese
(Putonghua, Guoyu)
Dialects
Traditional Chinese
Simplified Chinese
Cyrillic (Dungan alphabet)
Xiao'erjing
Mainland Chinese Braille
Taiwanese Braille
Two-Cell Chinese Braille
Pinyin
Zhuyin
Wenfa Shouyu
Language codes
ISO 639-3
Glottolog mand1415
Linguasphere 79-AAA-b
Mandarin and Jin in China.png
Mandarin area in China, with Jin (sometimes treated as a separate group) in light green
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.
Mandarin Chinese
Traditional Chinese
Simplified Chinese 官话
Literal meaning officials' speech
Northern Chinese
Chinese 北方話
Literal meaning Northern speech

Mandarin (Listeni/ˈmændərɪn, -drɪn/; simplified Chinese: ; traditional Chinese: ; 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 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 any list of languages by number of native speakers (with nearly a billion).


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