Chinese language

Chinese ("Hanyu") is a family of languages spoken mainly in China and other countries. Approximately one billion people speak Chinese in the world.

"Chinese" is also a usual name of one of those languages, the one used as official language in China and other countries. Another English name for it is "Mandarin", while it is referred to as "putonghua" (meaning common speech) in Mainland China, "guoyu" (meaning national language) in Taiwan and "huayu" (meaning language of Chinese people) in Singapore. The written form of this standard Chinese is known as "zhongwen" (meaning written language of the middle).