Standard Mandarin 鈥 also known as Standard Chinese, Standard Mandarin Chinese or Standard spoken Chinese 鈥 is the official modern Chinese spoken language used by the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China (Taiwan), and Singapore.
The phonology of Standard Mandarin is based on the Beijing dialect, which in turn belongs to Mandarin, a large and very diverse group of Chinese dialects spoken across northern and southwestern China. The vocabulary is largely drawn from this group of dialects. The grammar of Standard Mandarin is standardized to the body of modern literary works written in Vernacular Chinese, which in practice follows the same tradition of the Mandarin group of dialects with some notable exceptions. As a result, Standard Mandarin itself is usually just called "Mandarin" in non-academic, everyday usage. However, linguists use "Mandarin" to refer to the entire group of dialects. This convention will be adopted by the rest of this article.
Standard Mandarin is officially known in the People's Republic of China as P菙t艒nghu脿 (Simplified Chinese: 鏅氳瘽; Traditional Chinese: 鏅氳┍, literally "common speech"), in the Republic of China (Taiwan) as Gu贸y菙 (Traditional Chinese: 鍦嬭獮; Simplified Chinese: 鍥借, literally "national language"), and in Malaysia and Singapore as Hu谩y菙 (Traditional Chinese: 鑿獮; Simplified Chinese: 鍗庤, literally "Chinese (in a cultural sense) language"). All three terms are used interchangeably in Chinese communities around the world.
From: wikipedia - Standard Mandarin Chines
