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Concept
Standard Chinese
Summary
Standard Chinese () is a modern standardized 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. 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.
Like other Sinitic languages, Standard Chinese is a tonal language with topic-prominent organization and subject–verb–object (SVO) word order. Compared with southern Chinese 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 linguistics, it may be termed Standard Northern Mandarin or Standard Beijing Mandarin, and in common speech simply Mandarin, better qualified as Standard Mandarin, Modern Standard Mandarin or Standard Mandarin Chinese.
Among linguists, Standard Chinese is known as Standard Northern Mandarin or Standard Beijing Mandarin. Colloquially, it is imprecisely referred simply as Mandarin, even though that name may refer also to the Mandarin dialect group as a whole or its historic standard such as Imperial Mandarin. The name Modern Standard Mandarin is used to distinguish it from its historic standard.
The term "Mandarin" is a translation of Guānhuà (, literally "bureaucrats' speech"), which referred to Imperial Mandarin.
The term (; 国语) or the "national language", had previously been used by the Manchu-ruled Qing dynasty of China to refer to the Manchurian language. As early as 1655, in the Memoir of Qing Dynasty, Volume: Emperor Nurhaci (清太祖實錄), it writes: "(In 1631) as Manchu ministers do not comprehend the Han language, each ministry shall create a new position to be filled up by Han official who can comprehend the national language.
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