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Glite Dictionary
Mandarin Chinese

Mandarin Chinese

1 3.7
The main form of Chinese spoken in Beijing and used as China's official language
  • noun
  • /ˈmændərɪn ˈʧaɪniz/
translation icon : mandarín
  • The closest runner-up is Mandarin Chinese, with roughly 1 billion speakers, the majority located in or around China.

Already English and Mandarin Chinese are the most dominant languages on the Internet.

Examples

  • While I was taking first-year Mandarin Chinese, the university made a deal to welcome the first-ever exchange students from the People's Republic of China.

    Blog text (28)

  • Maybe someone can hook you up with the person who speaks Mandarin Chinese in your town.

    Blog text (19)

  • Already English and Mandarin Chinese are the most dominant languages on the Internet.

    Lex Fridman

  • So for instance, in in English or in Mandarin Chinese, the sentence structure is pretty consistent.

  • Mandarin Chinese can help you look at Chinese culture even more closely and grab potential opportunities.

    Blog text (9)

  • The next step in generating the inventory was to translate the items from English into Mandarin Chinese.

    Academic text (2008)

  • All parents and three-quarters of the youths chose the Mandarin Chinese over the English version.

    Academic text (2006)

  • A new cultural policy in direct denial of the colonial legacy was introduced from 1946 onward, beginning with promoting Mandarin Chinese and forbidding the use of Japanese in schools.

    Academic text (2014)

  • Pinyin is an alphabetic script that represents the pronunciation of spoken Chinese and can be regarded as a Romanization system of Mandarin Chinese.

    Academic text (2013)

  • China declared Mandarin Chinese its official language and began teaching in Mandarin Chinese only in all its schools.

Synonyms

Mandarin
vsMandarin Chinese
1 5.3

The official standard form of Chinese spoken in China, based on Beijing speech

is the fuller two word form used instead of the shorter label
Mandarin dialect
vsMandarin Chinese
5.6

The main form of Chinese spoken in Beijing and used as China's official language

is the official national standard term rather than a regional label

Surface Forms

Mandarin Chinese singular
Mandarin Chineses plural

Morphology

Mandarin + Chinese

The phrase simply combines 'Mandarin' (the Beijing-dialect-based official variety) with 'Chinese' to specify a particular variety of the Chinese language; the overall meaning is directly derivable from the constituents. This is a literal, compositional label for a language variety and is cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows the words would understand it.

Etymology

Mandarin Chinese may come from an old word for a high 'government official' who spoke the language used at the emperor's court, so the name first meant the speech of those officials. That's why Mandarin now refers to the country's 'official language' and the standard Chinese spoken in Beijing and taught across China.