Standard Chinese information

Common name in mainland China
Common name in mainland China
Traditional Chinese	普通話
Simplified Chinese	普通话
Literal meaning	Common speech
Hanyu Pinyin
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu Pinyin	Pǔtōnghuà
Bopomofo	ㄆㄨˇ ㄊㄨㄥㄏㄨㄚˋ
Wade–Giles	P'u3-t'ung1-hua4
Tongyong Pinyin	Pǔ-tong-huà
Yale Romanization	Pǔtūnghwà
IPA	[pʰù.tʰʊ́ŋ.xwâ]
Common name in Taiwan
Traditional Chinese	國語
Simplified Chinese	国语
Literal meaning	National language
Hanyu Pinyin
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu Pinyin	Guóyǔ
Bopomofo	ㄍㄨㄛˊ ㄩˇ
Wade–Giles	Kuo2-yü3
Tongyong Pinyin	Guó-yǔ
Yale Romanization	Gwóyǔ
IPA	[kwǒ.ỳ]
Common name in Singapore and Southeast Asia
Traditional Chinese	華語
Simplified Chinese	华语
Literal meaning	Chinese language
Hanyu Pinyin
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu Pinyin	Huáyǔ
Bopomofo	ㄏㄨㄚˊ ㄩˇ
Wade–Giles	Hua2-yü3
Tongyong Pinyin	Huá-yǔ
Yale Romanization	Hwáyǔ
IPA	[xwǎ.ỳ]

Standard Chinese
Standard Chinese
Standard Mandarin
现代标准汉语; 現代標準漢語; Xiàndài biāozhǔn hànyǔ
Native to	Mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore
Native speakers	Has begun acquiring native speakers (as of 1988);; L1 and L2 speakers: 80% of China
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Sinitic Chinese Mandarin Beijing Mandarin Beijingese Standard Chinese; ; ; ; ; ;
Early forms	Proto-Sino-Tibetan Old Chinese Eastern Han Chinese Middle Chinese Old Mandarin Middle Mandarin Beijing Mandarin ; ; ; ; ; ;
Writing system	Traditional characters; Simplified characters; Mainland Chinese Braille; Taiwanese Braille; Two-cell Chinese Braille;
Signed forms	Signed Chinese
Official status
Official language in	People's Republic of China (de facto, as Putonghua); Taiwan (de facto, as Guoyu); Singapore (as Huayu); United Nations; Shanghai Cooperation Organisation;
Regulated by	National Language Regulating Committee [zh] (China); National Languages Committee (Taiwan); Promote Mandarin Council (Singapore); Chinese Language Standardisation Council (Malaysia);
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
ISO 639-6	goyu (Guoyu); huyu (Huayu); cosc (Putonghua);
Glottolog	None
	Countries where Standard Chinese is spoken Majority native language Statutory or de facto national working language More than 1,000,000 L1 and L2 speakers More than 500,000 speakers More than 100,000 speakers
	This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Standard Chinese (simplified Chinese: 现代标准汉语; traditional Chinese: 現代標準漢語; pinyin: Xiàndài biāozhǔn hànyǔ; lit. 'modern standard Han speech') is a modern standard form of Mandarin Chinese that was first codified during the republican era (1912‒1949). It is designated as the official language of mainland China and a major language in the United Nations, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is largely based on the Beijing dialect. Standard Chinese is a pluricentric language with local standards in mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore that mainly differ in their lexicon.^[7] Hong Kong written Chinese, used for formal written communication in Hong Kong and Macau, is a form of Standard Chinese that is read aloud with the Cantonese reading of characters.

Like other Sinitic languages, Standard Chinese is a tonal language with topic-prominent organization and subject–verb–object (SVO) word order. Compared with southern varieties, the language has fewer vowels, final consonants and tones, but more initial consonants. It is an analytic language, albeit with many compound words.

In the context of linguistics, the dialect has been labeled Standard Northern Mandarin^[8]^[9]^[10] or Standard Beijing Mandarin,^[11]^[12] and in common speech simply Mandarin,^[13] better qualified as Standard Mandarin, Modern Standard Mandarin or Standard Mandarin Chinese.

^ Norman (1988), pp. 251.
^ Liang (2014), p. 45.
^ "Over 80 percent of Chinese population speak Mandarin", en.people.cn, retrieved 22 December 2021
^ Tai, James; Tsay, Jane (2015), Sign Languages of the World: A Comparative Handbook, Walter de Gruyter, p. 772, ISBN 9781614518174, retrieved 26 February 2020
^ Adamson, Bob; Feng, Anwei (27 December 2021), Multilingual China: National, Minority and Foreign Languages, Routledge, p. 90, ISBN 978-1-000-48702-2, Despite not being defined as such in the Constitution, Putonghua enjoys de facto status of the official language in China and is legislated as the standard form of Chinese.
^ http://www.china-language.gov.cn/ Archived 18 December 2015 at the Wayback Machine (Chinese)
^ Bradley (1992), p. 307.
^ Rohsenow, John S. (2004), "Fifty Years of Script and Written Language Reform in the P.R.C.", in Zhou, Minglang (ed.), Language Policy in the People's Republic of China, Springer, pp. 22, 24, ISBN 9781402080395, accurately represent and express the sounds of standard Northern Mandarin (Putonghua) [...]. Central to the promotion of Putonghua as a national language with a standard pronunciation as well as to assisting literacy in the non-phonetic writing system of Chinese characters was the development of a system of phonetic symbols with which to convey the pronunciation of spoken words and written characters in standard northern Mandarin.
^ Ran, Yunyun; Weijer, Jeroen van de (2016), "On L2 English Intonation Patterns by Mandarin and Shanghainese Speakers: A Pilot Study", in Sloos, Marjoleine; Weijer, Jeroen van de (eds.), Proceedings of the second workshop "Chinese Accents and Accented Chinese" (2nd CAAC) 2016, at the Nordic Center, Fudan University, Shanghai, 26-27 October 2015 (PDF), p. 4, archived from the original (PDF) on 11 December 2016, We recorded a number of English sentences spoken by speakers with Mandarin Chinese (standard northern Mandarin) as their first language and by Chinese speakers with Shanghainese as their first language, [...]
^ Bradley, David (2008), "Chapter 5: East and Southeast Asia", in Moseley, Christopher (ed.), Encyclopedia of the World's Endangered Languages, Routledge, p. 500 (e-book), ISBN 9781135796402, As a result of the spread of standard northern Mandarin and major regional varieties of provincial capitals since 1950, many of the smaller tuyu [土語] are disappearing by being absorbed into larger regional fangyan [方言], which of course may be a sub-variety of Mandarin or something else.
^ Siegel, Jeff (2003), "Chapter 8: Social Context", in Doughty, Catherine J.; Long, Michael H. (eds.), The Handbook of Second Language Acquisition, Blackwell Publishing, U.K., p. 201, ISBN 9781405151887, Escure [Geneviève Escure, 1997] goes on to analyse second dialect texts of Putonghua (standard Beijing Mandarin Chinese) produced by speakers of other varieties of Chinese, [in] Wuhan and Suzhou.
^ Chen, Ying-Chuan (2013). Becoming Taiwanese: Negotiating Language, Culture and Identity (PDF) (Thesis). University of Ottawa. p. 300. Archived from the original (PDF) on 19 February 2020. [...] a consistent gender pattern found across all the age cohorts is that women were more concerned about their teachers' bad Mandarin pronunciation, and implied that it was an inferior form of Mandarin, which signified their aspiration to speak standard Beijing Mandarin, the good version of the language.
^ Weng, Jeffrey (2018), "What is Mandarin? The social project of language standardization in early Republican China", The Journal of Asian Studies, 59 (1): 611–633, doi:10.1017/S0021911818000487, in common usage, 'Mandarin' or 'Mandarin Chinese' usually refers to China's standard spoken language. In fact, I would argue that this is the predominant meaning of the word

[FOOTNOTENorman1988251-1] Norman (1988), pp. 251.

[FOOTNOTELiang201445-2] Liang (2014), p. 45.

[over80percent-3] "Over 80 percent of Chinese population speak Mandarin", en.people.cn, retrieved 22 December 2021

[4] Tai, James; Tsay, Jane (2015), Sign Languages of the World: A Comparative Handbook, Walter de Gruyter, p. 772, ISBN 9781614518174, retrieved 26 February 2020

[Adamson_&_Feng-5] Adamson, Bob; Feng, Anwei (27 December 2021), Multilingual China: National, Minority and Foreign Languages, Routledge, p. 90, ISBN 978-1-000-48702-2, Despite not being defined as such in the Constitution, Putonghua enjoys de facto status of the official language in China and is legislated as the standard form of Chinese.

[6] ttp://www.china-language.gov.cn/ Archived 18 December 2015 at the Wayback Machine (Chinese)

[FOOTNOTEBradley1992307-7] Bradley (1992), p. 307.

[John_Rohsenow_2004-8] Rohsenow, John S. (2004), "Fifty Years of Script and Written Language Reform in the P.R.C.", in Zhou, Minglang (ed.), Language Policy in the People's Republic of China, Springer, pp. 22, 24, ISBN 9781402080395, accurately represent and express the sounds of standard Northern Mandarin (Putonghua) [...]. Central to the promotion of Putonghua as a national language with a standard pronunciation as well as to assisting literacy in the non-phonetic writing system of Chinese characters was the development of a system of phonetic symbols with which to convey the pronunciation of spoken words and written characters in standard northern Mandarin.

[Yunyun_Ran_2016-9] Ran, Yunyun; Weijer, Jeroen van de (2016), "On L2 English Intonation Patterns by Mandarin and Shanghainese Speakers: A Pilot Study", in Sloos, Marjoleine; Weijer, Jeroen van de (eds.), Proceedings of the second workshop "Chinese Accents and Accented Chinese" (2nd CAAC) 2016, at the Nordic Center, Fudan University, Shanghai, 26-27 October 2015 (PDF), p. 4, archived from the original (PDF) on 11 December 2016, We recorded a number of English sentences spoken by speakers with Mandarin Chinese (standard northern Mandarin) as their first language and by Chinese speakers with Shanghainese as their first language, [...]

[David_Bradley_2008-10] Bradley, David (2008), "Chapter 5: East and Southeast Asia", in Moseley, Christopher (ed.), Encyclopedia of the World's Endangered Languages, Routledge, p. 500 (e-book), ISBN 9781135796402, As a result of the spread of standard northern Mandarin and major regional varieties of provincial capitals since 1950, many of the smaller tuyu [土語] are disappearing by being absorbed into larger regional fangyan [方言], which of course may be a sub-variety of Mandarin or something else.

[Jeff_Siegel_2003-11] Siegel, Jeff (2003), "Chapter 8: Social Context", in Doughty, Catherine J.; Long, Michael H. (eds.), The Handbook of Second Language Acquisition, Blackwell Publishing, U.K., p. 201, ISBN 9781405151887, Escure [Geneviève Escure, 1997] goes on to analyse second dialect texts of Putonghua (standard Beijing Mandarin Chinese) produced by speakers of other varieties of Chinese, [in] Wuhan and Suzhou.

[Ying-Chuan_Chen2013-12] Chen, Ying-Chuan (2013). Becoming Taiwanese: Negotiating Language, Culture and Identity (PDF) (Thesis). University of Ottawa. p. 300. Archived from the original (PDF) on 19 February 2020. [...] a consistent gender pattern found across all the age cohorts is that women were more concerned about their teachers' bad Mandarin pronunciation, and implied that it was an inferior form of Mandarin, which signified their aspiration to speak standard Beijing Mandarin, the good version of the language.

[Weng,_Jeffrey_2018_611–633-13] Weng, Jeffrey (2018), "What is Mandarin? The social project of language standardization in early Republican China", The Journal of Asian Studies, 59 (1): 611–633, doi:10.1017/S0021911818000487, in common usage, 'Mandarin' or 'Mandarin Chinese' usually refers to China's standard spoken language. In fact, I would argue that this is the predominant meaning of the word

Standard Chinese information

and 29 Related for: Standard Chinese information

Standard Chinese

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Comparison of Standard Chinese transcription systems

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Table of General Standard Chinese Characters

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Mandarin Chinese

Written vernacular Chinese

Chinese accounting standards

Taiwanese Mandarin

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Homophonic puns in Standard Chinese

History of Standard Chinese

Chinese characters

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Pinyin

List of countries and territories where Chinese is an official language

Simplified Chinese characters

Varieties of Chinese

Traditional Chinese characters

Chinese grammar

Malaysian Mandarin

Written Chinese

Cantonese

Languages of China

Standard language

Chinese people

Chinese respelling of the English alphabet

Standard Chinese
Standard Mandarin
现代标准汉语; 現代標準漢語 Xiàndài biāozhǔn hànyǔ
Native to	Mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore
Native speakers	Has begun acquiring native speakers (as of 1988);^[1]^[2] L1 and L2 speakers: 80% of China^[3]
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Sinitic Chinese Mandarin Beijing Mandarin Beijingese Standard Chinese
Early forms	Proto-Sino-Tibetan Old Chinese Eastern Han Chinese Middle Chinese Old Mandarin Middle Mandarin Beijing Mandarin
Writing system	Traditional characters Simplified characters Mainland Chinese Braille Taiwanese Braille Two-cell Chinese Braille
Signed forms	Signed Chinese^[4]
Official status
Official language in	People's Republic of China (de facto, as Putonghua)^[5] Taiwan (de facto, as Guoyu) Singapore (as Huayu) United Nations Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
Regulated by	National Language Regulating Committee [zh] (China)^[6] National Languages Committee (Taiwan) Promote Mandarin Council (Singapore) Chinese Language Standardisation Council (Malaysia)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
ISO 639-6	`goyu (Guoyu) huyu (Huayu) cosc (Putonghua)`
Glottolog	None
Countries where Standard Chinese is spoken Majority native language Statutory or de facto national working language More than 1,000,000 L1 and L2 speakers More than 500,000 speakers More than 100,000 speakers
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.