Standard Mandarin – also known as Standard Chinese, Standard Mandarin Chinese or
Standard spoken Chinese – is the official modern Chinese spoken language used by
the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China (Taiwan), and Singapore.
The phonology of Standard Mandarin is based on the Beijing dialect, which in
turn belongs to Mandarin, a large and very diverse group of Chinese dialects
spoken across northern and southwestern China. The vocabulary is largely drawn
from this group of dialects. The grammar of Standard Mandarin is standardized to
the body of modern literary works written in Vernacular Chinese, which in
practice follows the same tradition of the Mandarin group of dialects with some
notable exceptions. As a result, Standard Mandarin itself is usually just called
"Mandarin" in non-academic, everyday usage. However, linguists use "Mandarin" to
refer to the entire group of dialects. This convention will be adopted by the
rest of this article.
Standard Mandarin is officially known in the People's Republic of China as
Pǔtōnghuà (Simplified Chinese: 普通话; Traditional Chinese: 普通話, literally "common
speech"), in the Republic of China (Taiwan) as Guóyǔ (Traditional Chinese: 國語;
Simplified Chinese: 国语, literally "national language"), and in Malaysia and
Singapore as Huáyǔ (Traditional Chinese: 華語; Simplified Chinese: 华语, literally
"Chinese (in a cultural sense) language"). All three terms are used
interchangeably in Chinese communities around the world.