Mandarin Chinese

British

noun

the official language of China since 1917; the form of Chinese spoken by about two thirds of the population and taught in schools throughout China See also Chinese Pekingese

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Example Sentences

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"Taiwan Travelogue" is the first book translated from Mandarin Chinese to win the award, and Yang, born in 1984, is the first Taiwanese winner of the prize, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary.

From Barron's • May 19, 2026

Program administrators hope to add Mandarin Chinese and Thai.

From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 27, 2025

Speakers of languages including Estonian and Finnish had the highest match rate of 100%, with the lowest at 70% for speakers of languages including Albanian and Mandarin Chinese.

From Science Daily • Nov. 20, 2024

China has replaced Tibetan as the main language of tuition with Mandarin Chinese.

From BBC • Mar. 9, 2024

Somewhat analogous to Urdu, in that it is a literary language used by the educated classes for intercommunication throughout a polygot empire, is the Mandarin Chinese.

From International Language Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar by Clark, Walter John

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023