Mandarin

Mandarin is a group of Chinese language dialects spoken across most of northern and southwestern China, with nearly one billion native speakers. It is the largest of the Chinese dialect groups, spoken by 70 percent of all Chinese speakers, and is often placed first in lists of languages by number of native speakers. Mandarin originated in North China and has been influenced by the greater ease of travel and communication in the North China Plain, as well as the spread of Mandarin to frontier areas. The Beijing dialect is the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language of China, Taiwan, and Singapore, and is used as one of the official languages of the United Nations.learn more on wikipedia