Mandarin varieties are spoken by 70 percent of all Chinese speakers over a large geographical area that stretches from Yunnan in the southwest to Xinjiang in the northwest and Heilongjiang in the northeast.

The English word "mandarin" (from Portuguese mandarim, from Malay menteri, from Sanskrit mantrī, mantrin, meaning 'minister or counsellor') originally meant an official of the Ming and Qing empires.

When Jesuit missionaries learned this standard language in the 16th century, they called it "Mandarin", from its Chinese name Guānhuà (官话; 官話; 'language of the officials').

New genres of vernacular literature were based on this language, including verse, drama and story forms, such as the qu and sanqu poetry.

The rime books differ in some details, but overall show many of the features characteristic of modern Mandarin dialects, such as the reduction and disappearance of final plosives and the reorganization of the Middle Chinese tones.

When voicing was lost in all languages except the Wu subfamily, this distinction became phonemic and the system of initials and tones was rearranged differently in each of the major groups.

[18] The flourishing vernacular literature of the period also shows distinctively Mandarin vocabulary and syntax, though some, such as the third-person pronoun tā (他), can be traced back to the Tang dynasty.

[19] Until the early 20th century, formal writing and even much poetry and fiction was done in Literary Chinese, which was modeled on the classics of the Warring States period and the Han dynasty.

[20] Hu Shih, a pivotal figure of the first half of the twentieth century, wrote an influential and perceptive study of this literary tradition, entitled "A History of Vernacular Literature" (Báihuà Wénxuéshǐ).

As a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using a common language based on Mandarin varieties, known as Guānhuà.

[26] The variant of Mandarin as spoken by educated classes in Beijing was made the official language of China by the Qing dynasty in the early 1900s and the successive Republican government.

[29][30] However, in other parts of the Chinese-speaking world, namely Hong Kong and Macau, the standard form of Chinese used in education, the media, formal speech, and everyday life remains the local Cantonese because of their colonial and linguistic history.

However, both versions of "school-standard" Chinese are often quite different from the Mandarin varieties that are spoken in accordance with regional habits, and neither is wholly identical to the Beijing dialect.

Unlike their compatriots on the southeast coast, few Mandarin speakers engaged in overseas emigration until the late 20th century, but there are now significant communities of them in cities across the world.

In contrast, the mountains and rivers of southern China have spawned the other six major groups of Chinese varieties, with great internal diversity, particularly in Fujian.

Meanwhile, a colloquial form called Singdarin is used in informal daily life and is heavily influenced in terms of both grammar and vocabulary by local languages such as Cantonese, Hokkien, and Malay.

[64] In 1936, Wang Li produced the first classification based on phonetic criteria, principally the evolution of Middle Chinese voiced initials.

[66] The widely accepted seven-group classification of Yuan Jiahua in 1960 kept Xiang and Gan separate, with Mandarin divided into Northern, Northwestern, Southwestern and Jiang–Huai (Lower Yangtze) subgroups.

[39] The linguist Li Rong proposed that the northwestern dialects of Shanxi and neighbouring areas that retain a final glottal stop in the Middle Chinese entering tone (plosive-final) category should constitute a separate top-level group called Jin.

[70][71] The southern boundary of the Mandarin area, with the central Wu, Gan and Xiang groups, is weakly defined due to centuries of diffusion of northern features.

[75][76] The Language Atlas of China calls the remainder of Mandarin a "supergroup", divided into eight dialect groups distinguished by their treatment of the Middle Chinese entering tone (see Tones below):[78][c] The Atlas also includes several unclassified Mandarin dialects spoken in scattered pockets across southeastern China, such as Nanping in Fujian and Dongfang on Hainan.

In the Beijing dialect that underlies the standard language, syllables beginning with original voiceless consonants were redistributed across the four tones in a completely random pattern.

[101] (This includes the dialect of Nanjing on which the Postal Romanization was based; it transcribes the glottal stop as a trailing h.) This development is shared with Wu Chinese and is thought to represent the pronunciation of Old Mandarin.

The singular pronouns in Mandarin are wǒ (我) 'I', nǐ (你 or 妳) 'you', nín (您) 'you (formal)', and tā (他, 她 or 它/牠) 'he, 'she', 'it', with -men (们/們) added for the plural.

While the first and second person singular pronouns are cognate with forms in other varieties of Chinese, the rest of the pronominal system is a Mandarin innovation (e.g., Shanghainese has non 侬/儂 'you' and yi 伊 'he', 'she').

There are also many Chinese words which come from foreign languages such as gāo'ěrfū (高尔夫) from "golf"; bǐjīní (比基尼) from "bikini", and hànbǎo bāo (汉堡包) from "hamburger".

Chinese varieties of all periods are considered prime examples of analytic languages, relying on word order and particles instead of inflection or affixes to provide grammatical information such as person, number, tense, mood, or case.

For example, the particle ma (嘛), which is used in most northern dialects to denote obviousness or contention, is replaced by yo (喲; 哟) in southern usage.

From Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Chinese (Mandarin):[113]人人Rénrén生shēng而ér自由,zìyóu,在zài尊嚴zūnyán和hé權利quánlì上shàng一律yīlù平等。píngděng.他們Tāmen賦有fùyǒu理性lǐxìng和hé良心,liángxīn,並bìng應yīng以yǐ兄弟xiōngdì關係guānxì的de精神jīngshén互相hùxiāng對待。duìdài.人人 生 而 自由, 在 尊嚴 和 權利 上 一律 平等。 他們 賦有 理性 和 良心, 並 應 以 兄弟 關係 的 精神 互相 對待。Rénrén shēng ér zìyóu, zài zūnyán hé quánlì shàng yīlù píngděng.

Tāmen fùyǒu lǐxìng hé liángxīn, bìng yīng yǐ xiōngdì guānxì de jīngshén hùxiāng duìdài.All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.