Mandarin is a group of Sinitic ("Chinese") languages and dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology

Mainland China
Most Han Chinese living in northern and southwestern China are native speakers of a dialect of Mandarin. The North China Plain provided few barriers to migration, leading to relative linguistic homogeneity over a wide area in

A syllable consists maximally of an initial consonant, a medial glide, a vowel, a coda, and tone. In the traditional analysis, the medial, vowel and coda are combined as a final. Not all combinations occur. For example, Standard Chinese (based on the Beijing dialect) has about

Chinese varieties of all periods are considered prime examples of analytic languages, relying on word order and particles instead of

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. Since their native varieties were often mutually unintelligible, these

The classification of Chinese dialects evolved during the 20th century, and many points remain unsettled. Early classifications tended to

There are more polysyllabic words in Mandarin than in all other major varieties of Chinese except Shanghainese . This is partly because Mandarin has undergone many more sound