Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin, Putonghua, Guoyu and Modern Standard Mandarin, is a standardized variety of Chinese and the official language of the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan), and is one of the four official languages of Singapore.

The phonology of Standard Chinese or Standard Mandarin is based on the Beijing dialect, but its vocabulary is drawn from the large and diverse group of Chinese dialects spoken across northern, central and southwestern China, a linguistic area whose varieties are collectively known as Mandarin Chinese. The grammar is standardized to the body of modern literary works that define written vernacular Chinese (originally Baihua), the colloquial alternative to Classical Chinese developed around the turn of the 20th century in China. The name "Mandarin" originally referred to the language used by the imperial court in Beijing and sometimes by imperial officials elsewhere (simplified Chinese: 官话; traditional Chinese: 官話; pinyin: Guānhuà; literally "speech of officials"), and as such was adopted as a synonym for Modern Standard Chinese in the 20th century, but the term became ambiguous as its use was extended in the field of linguistics to the various Northern dialects of Chinese (simplified Chinese: 北方话; traditional Chinese: 北方話; pinyin: Běifānghuà). This article will use the phrase "Mandarin dialects" for this broader usage.

Names

Standard Chinese is officially known,

in the People's Republic of China (including the SARs of Hong Kong[5] and Macau) as Putonghua (simplified Chinese: 普通话; traditional Chinese: 普通話; pinyin: Pǔtōnghuà; literally "common speech").

in Taiwan as Guoyu (Chinese: 國語; pinyin: Guóyǔ; literally "national language").

in Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore as Huayu (simplified Chinese: 华语; traditional Chinese: 華語; pinyin: Huáyǔ; literally "Chinese (in a cultural sense) language"). In other parts of the world, the three names are used interchangeably to varying degrees.

The name Guoyu received official recognition in 1909, when the Qing Dynasty proclaimed Mandarin as the "national language". The name Putonghua also has a long, albeit unofficial, pedigree. It was used as early as 1906 in writings by Zhu Wenxiong (朱文熊) to differentiate a modern standard language from classical Chinese and other varieties of Chinese.