Standard Chinese

Standard Chinese, also known as Modern Standard Mandarin and Putonghua, sometimes simply referred to as ""Mandarin"", is a standard language that is the sole official language of both China and Taiwan, and also one of the four official languages of Singapore. The pronunciation of the standard is based on the Beijing dialect, its vocabulary is drawn from Mandarin dialects, and the grammar is based on literature in the modern written vernacular.Like other varieties of Chinese, Standard Chinese is a tonal language. It has more initial consonants but fewer vowels, final consonants and tones than southern varieties. Standard Chinese is an analytic language, though with many compound words. Like other varieties of Chinese it is a topic-prominent language and has subject–verb–object word order. The language is written using either traditional or simplified Chinese characters, augmented by Hanyu Pinyin romanization for pedagogical purposes.