Guan (官话)

Guan (官) or Mandarin is a group of Chinese varieties spoken in northern and southwestern China. This group includes Standard Mandarin or Standard Chinese, as well as regional varieties of Mandarin, and Dungan. As most varieties of Mandarin are found in northern China, they are also known as 北方话 [北方話] (běifānghuà) or "northern speech".

There are differences between the varieties of Mandarin from northern and southern China, particularly in the tones, and mutually intelligiblity between them is relatively low, however the differences are not as great as those between other varieties of Chinese.

Standard Mandarin developed from the language used by Chinese officials, most of whom came from Beijing. As a result, Standard Mandarin is based mainly on northern varieties of Mandarin, especially Beijing varieties. The officials called their language 官话 [官話] (guānyǔ) or "official language". The word Mandarin comes from Portuguese mandarim, from Malay menteri (minister), from Hindi मंत्री (mantrī - secretary), from Sanskrit मन्त्रिन् (mantrin - counselor, minster), and originally meant an official of the Chinese empire.

Varieties of Guan / Mandarin

Links

Information about Guan / Mandarin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_Chinese
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_dialect

Mandarin lessons and courses
http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/ccol/content.htm
http://www.chineseon.net
http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/online.htm
http://www.languageguide.org/mandarin/
http://www.chinawestexchange.com/Mandarin/
http://www.chinese-outpost.com/language/
http://learnchinese.elanguageschool.net
http://www.chinese-lessons.com/mandarin/
http://langhub.com
http://www.mandarinlearn.com
http://www.learnchineseeveryday.com


Chinese pages

Written Chinese: Oracle Bone Script, Simplified characters, Bopomofo, Types of characters, Structure of written Chinese, Evolution of characters, How the Chinese script works, Xiao'erjing, General Chinese

Spoken Chinese: Mandarin, Dungan, Wu, Shanghainese, Wenzhounese, Yue, Cantonese, Weitou, Min, Jian'ou, Taiwanese, Teochew, Fuzhounese, Puxian, Hakka, Xiang, Gan, How many people speak Chinese?

Other Chinese pages: Chinese numbers (數碼) | Chinese classifiers (量詞) | Electronic dictionaries | Chinese links | Books: Chinese characters and calligraphy | Cantonese | Mandarin, Shanghainese, Hokkien and Taiwanese

Semanto-phonetic writing systems

Akkadian Cuneiform, Ancient Egyptian (Demotic), Ancient Egyptian (Hieratic), Ancient Egyptian (Hieroglyphs), Chinese, Chữ-nôm, Cuneiform, Japanese, Jurchen, Khitan, Linear B, Luwian, Mayan, Naxi, Sawndip (Old Zhuang), Sui, Sumerian Cuneiform, Tangut (Hsihsia)

Other writing systems

Page last modified: 15.03.23

[top]


Green Web Hosting - Kualo

Why not share this page:

 

Learn a Language with gymglish

If you like this site and find it useful, you can support it by making a donation via PayPal or Patreon, or by contributing in other ways. Omniglot is how I make my living.

 

Note: all links on this site to Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.fr are affiliate links. This means I earn a commission if you click on any of them and buy something. So by clicking on these links you can help to support this site.

Get a 30-day Free Trial of Amazon Prime (UK)

If you're looking for home or car insurance in the UK, why not try Policy Expert?

[top]

iVisa.com