Standard Chinese

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.

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Standard Chinese
Standard Mandarin
Native to	Mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore
Native speakers	Began acquiring native speakers in 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	Chinese characters Mainland Chinese Braille Taiwanese Braille Two-cell Chinese Braille
Signed forms	Signed Chinese[4]
Official status
Official language in	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
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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.