Where does Mandarin come from?
Mandarin is the most widely spoken of the languages of China. It is the dialect of Beijing and may be regarded as modern standard Chinese – ‘Putonghua’ or ‘standard speech’. Spoken Chinese comprises many dialects, of which Mandarin is the main one. Although the dialects employ a common written form, making written communication possible between dialects, when spoken they are mutually unintelligible and for this reason are often referred to as distinct languages. Like the other languages of the Sino-Tibetan family, Mandarin is tonal, meaning that different tones, or intonations, distinguish words that otherwise are pronounced identically. How many people speak Mandarin? Chinese, in its various forms, is spoken by more people than any other language in the world – about 1.1 billion people in the People’s Republic of China alone. Some 835 million people in central and Northern China, and Taiwan speak Mandarin as a first language. In how many countries? Mandarin is the official language of
