Mandarin | |
---|---|
官話/官话, Guānhuà | |
Region | Most of Northern and Southwestern China (see also Standard Chinese) |
Native speakers | 955 million (2010) |
Language family | |
Early forms: | |
Dialects | Jin (sometimes a separate group) |
Writing system | Traditional Chinese Simplified Chinese Mainland Chinese Braille Taiwanese Braille Two-Cell Chinese Braille |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | cmn |
Linguasphere | 79-AAA-b |
Mandarin area, with Jin (sometimes treated as a separate group) in light green |
Mandarin Chinese, or simply Mandarin, (/ˈmændərɪn/ ( listen); simplified Chinese: 官话; traditional Chinese: 官話; pinyin: Guānhuà; literally "speech of officials") is the language of government and education of the Chinese mainland and Taiwan, with the notable exceptions of Hong Kong and Macau where a local dialect of Chinese called Cantonese is more often used.