Mandarin Chinese belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family, which includes the world’s most widely spoken native language.
Mandarin is a major Sinitic language group spoken throughout China and in communities worldwide. Standard Mandarin, based largely on the Beijing dialect, is the official language of the People’s Republic of China and one of the official languages of Singapore. It uses a tonal sound system and is written primarily with Chinese characters.
Sino-Tibetan is one of the world’s major language families, though scholars continue to debate its internal classification and exact boundaries. It includes the Sinitic languages as well as languages such as Burmese and many languages of the Himalayas and mainland Southeast Asia. “Chinese” can refer to a group of related Sinitic varieties rather than one uniform spoken language. Mandarin’s huge native-speaker population is distinct from its total number of learners and second-language speakers.