LessonsMandarin Classes
Mandarin (Traditional Chinese: 官話; Simplified Chinese: 官话, pinyin: Guānhuà; literally "speech of officials"), or Beifanghua (Simplified Chinese: 北方话; Traditional Chinese: 北方話; pinyin: Běifānghuà; literally "Northern Dialect(s)"), is a category of related Chinese dialects spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. When taken as a separate language, as is often done in academic literature, the Mandarin dialects have more speakers than any other language.
In everyday use, ‘Mandarin’ refers usually to just Standard Mandarin (Putonghua/Guoyu). In its broader sense, Mandarin is a diverse group of related dialects, some less mutually intelligible than others. It is a grouping defined and used mainly by linguists, and is not commonly used outside of academic circles as a self-description. Instead, when asked to describe the spoken form they are using, Chinese speaking a form of non-Standard Mandarin will describe the variant that they are speaking, for example Sichuan dialect or Northeast China dialect, and consider it distinct from ‘Standard Mandarin’ (putonghua); they may not recognize that it is in fact classified by linguists as a form of ‘Mandarin’ in a broader sense. Nor is there a common ‘Mandarin’ identity based on language; rather, there are strong regional identities centred on individual dialects, because of the wide geographical distribution and cultural diversity of its speakers.
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