Mandarin language

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mandarin is the language of North China and Taiwan.

Mandarin is a northern Chinese dialect, and one of five major dialects in China.

In China, it is known as Putonghua 普通话/普通話 (Common language) and Hanyu 汉语/漢語 (Language of the Han nationality)

Overseas, it is known as Huayu 华语/華語 (Chinese language). In Taiwan, it is known as Guoyu 国语/國語 (National language)

It is spoken by over 800 million people around the world, more than any other language.

It is one of the six official languages at the United Nations.

[edit] Writing

Mandarin is written with characters called Hànzì (漢字 or 汉字). Each Hànzì is a word, which means that many thousands of characters exist.