Mandarin Chinese

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Mandarin is the most widely spoken of the Chinese languages or dialect groups. It is the native language of about 70% of Han Chinese. With about 898 million speakers, it is the language with the most native speakers in the world.

The Chinese name is Guānhuà (Chinese 官話 / 官话), which can be translated as "official language". The word "Mandarin" is not of Chinese origin, but of Malay-Portuguese origin, and is a Western term for the high state officials in Imperial China during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Alternatively, it is also referred to as Běifānghuà (北方話 / 北方话 - "language of the north," listen^{? /i}), which translates roughly as "northern Chinese," although its area of distribution extends well beyond northern China. It is an umbrella term for dialects of northern Chinese origin and can be linguistically divided into eight subordinate dialect groups.

As a native language, Mandarin is widely spoken in China north of the Yangtze River and in a belt south of the river from Qiujiang (Jiangxi) to Zhenjiang (Jiangsu), in Hubei Province except for the southeastern tip, Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, northwestern Guangxi, and northwestern Hunan.

The Beijing dialect of Mandarin forms the basis for standardized High Chinese, which is usually referred to in the People's Republic of China as Putonghua (普通話 / 普通话, pǔtōnghuà - "general language") and in Taiwan with Guoyu (國語 / 国语, guóyǔ - "national language"), technically referred to as Modern Standard Chinese (現代標準漢語 / 现代标准汉语, xiàndài biāozhǔn hànyǔ). Misleadingly, in general German usage, "Mandarin" is also used to refer to High Chinese. Technically, there is a linguistic difference between the terms Mandarin (Guanhua) and High Chinese (Putonghua).