The Mandarin Language : Fast Facts

There are 867.2 million Mandarin speakers in the world, making it the world’s most commonly spoken language. The English term Mandarin, originates from the word “minister”, referring to the language of the mandarins, or imperial magistrates in China.

Mandarin is also known as Putonghua (Common Speech), and is the official language of China, as well as one of the official languages of the United Nations.

Mandarin is also called Guoyu (National language) by Chinese abroad. As with Putonghua, both generally refer to the same Beijing dialect, which is the standardized MSA or Modern Standard Chinese.

An astounding 21% of the world’s population can read Chinese, while just 8.3% read English.

MSA is the official language of R.O.C. or Taiwan, and is also spoken in Singapore and Malaysia, where it is referred to as simple “Chinese”.

The mandarin languages utilizes a variety of tones to make a distinction between words or syllables.

Mandarin is a tonal language.  In order to convey the right word, you must use the right pitch.

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