Standard Chinese

Standard Chinese (simplified Chinese: 现代标准汉语; traditional Chinese: 現代標準漢語; pinyin: Xiàndài biāozhǔn hànyǔ), often colloquially called Mandarin Chinese, is the modern standardized form of Mandarin Chinese, largely based on the Beijing dialect. It is the official lingua franca of the People's Republic of China, one of the six official languages of the United Nations, one of the national languages of Taiwan, and one of the four official languages of Singapore. It is a pluricentric language with local variations in Mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore, which mainly differ in accent and lexicon. In Mainland China, Standard Chinese is most commonly called Putonghua, while in Taiwan it is most commonly called Guoyu.

Like other Sinitic languages, Standard Chinese is an analytic language with mostly compound words, and has five phonemic tones (four classic tones and a neutral tone) with topic-prominent organization and subject–verb–object (SVO) word order. Compared with other varieties of Chinese, Standard Chinese has fewer tones, vowels and final consonants, but more initial consonants.

Naming

In English

Among linguists, Standard Chinese has been referred to as Standard Northern Mandarin or Standard Beijing Mandarin. It is colloquially referred to as simply Mandarin, though this term may also refer to the Mandarin dialect group as a whole, or the late imperial form used as a lingua franca. "Mandarin" is a translation of Guanhua (官話; 官话; 'bureaucrat speech'), which referred to the late imperial lingua franca. The term Modern Standard Mandarin is used to distinguish it from older forms.