Mandarin is a group of dialects commonly referred to as a single language, with over 850 million speakers worldwide. It is the official language of China, Singapore, and Taiwan, and one of the six languages used by the United Nations. Mandarin is a tonal language and has official language status in China. The idea of an official, standardized language in China dates back to the Ming dynasty. The modern movement to standardize the language began in the early 20th century and continued until the 1949 revolution.
Mandarin is a large group of dialects that is commonly referred to as a single language. The term Mandarin can also be used as a shorthand for the Standard Mandarin dialect, also known as Guoyu or Putonghua. There are more than 850 million speakers of Mandarin worldwide, making it easily the most widely spoken language on Earth.
Mandarin is spoken throughout southwest and northern China, and most Chinese citizens know at least some Mandarin. It is the official language of China, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also one of the six languages officially used by the United Nations.
For many non-Chinese, the term Chinese is used to refer to a common language spoken throughout China. This confusion is understandable by Westerners, accustomed to having a single language spoken and mutually intelligible throughout their country. China has no such spoken language, however, and therefore the use of the term “Chinese” to describe the language is misleading. Mandarin comes closest to what people tend to mean when they use “Chinese” to describe a language, but even so it differs markedly from most Westerners’ concept of a national language.
Native Mandarin speakers rarely refer to their regional dialects as Mandarin, but will instead use the regional name, such as Beijing Mandarin, Spoken or Jiao Liao. The term Mandarin is reserved to describe the form of Standard Mandarin that has official language status in China and is taught in schools. The Mandarin Chinese situation is a good example of what is referred to as a dialect continuum: the Mandarin dialects spoken throughout China do not always have clear boundaries, but change slowly as one moves further and further from one source, with neighboring dialects which are usually found mutually intelligible, but become more difficult to understand as the distance increases, until finally beyond a certain distance communication becomes impossible.
The idea of an official, standardized language in China is ancient, dating back at least to the Ming dynasty in the 14th century. With a land area as large as China’s and with different cultural groups living under a single flag, a multitude of languages was inevitable. In order to foster a functioning bureaucracy, therefore, it was necessary to devise a coherent “court” language in which state affairs and official communications between provinces were conducted.
The modern movement to standardize the language began in the early part of the 20th century and continued until the 1949 revolution. Since soon after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Standard Mandarin has been taught in schools and used in major media. , leading to high levels of national literacy in this standardized language. Mandarin is a tonal language, with the tones used to pronounce words making up much of the semantic value of the word itself. This tends to create great difficulty for speakers of non-tonal languages in acquiring Mandarin as a second language, and is a source of much confusion and humorous lapses in speech.
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