Sino-Tibetan · ISO 639-3 cmn
Mandarin Chinese Language 官话
Mandarin Chinese is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken by about 1.29 billion people in 3 countries. It is written in the Simplified Han, Traditional Han and Latin scripts.
Where Mandarin Chinese is spoken
- Official language
- Regional official
- Spoken by 10%+
- 1–10%
- Smaller communities
Countries that speak Mandarin Chinese
Language family
- Sino-Tibetan
- Sinitic
- Classical-Middle-Modern Sinitic
- Middle-Modern Sinitic
- Northern Chinese
- Mandarinic
- Mandarin Chinese
Writing system
Simplified Han, Traditional Han and Latin scripts
Related languages
About the Mandarin Chinese language
Mandarin Chinese (官话) is spoken by about 1.29 billion people, which makes it the 1st most spoken language in the world — ahead of English (1.27 billion). It belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family and, more precisely, to the Mandarinic group within the Classical-Middle-Modern Sinitic branch.
Where is Mandarin Chinese spoken?
Mandarin Chinese is used in 3 countries. The largest communities live in China (1.26 billion), Hong Kong (6.9 million) and Singapore (4.8 million). More than half of the population speaks it in China, Hong Kong and Singapore — the places where travellers will hear it everywhere.
Share of the population that speaks Mandarin Chinese: China 89% (1.26 billion), Hong Kong 95% (6.9 million) and Singapore 80% (4.8 million).
Mandarin Chinese is not a national official language anywhere.
Writing system and status
Mandarin Chinese is written in the Simplified Han, Traditional Han and Latin scripts. It is a safe, widely transmitted language: children still learn it at home as their first language.
Its closest relatives in the same branch of the family are Jinyu Chinese, Wu Chinese, Yue Chinese, Hakka Chinese, Xiang Chinese, Gan Chinese and 2 more.
ISO codes: ISO 639-3 cmn.
Frequently asked questions about Mandarin Chinese
How many people speak Mandarin Chinese?
Where is Mandarin Chinese spoken?
What language family does Mandarin Chinese belong to?
What is Mandarin Chinese called in Mandarin Chinese?
Is Mandarin Chinese an endangered language?
Data: Languages of the World dataset (MIT) — ISO 639-3, Glottolog (CC BY 4.0), Unicode CLDR, Google LinguaMeta (CC BY 4.0) and Wikidata; country lists: samayo/country-json (MIT). Speaker numbers include first- and second-language speakers where sources report them.