普通话 pǔtōnghuà Mandarin (common language)
How to remember 普通话: 普 widespread + 通 pass through + 话 speech = Mandarin (common language).
Characters
How it is used
- The official term for Standard Mandarin, the common spoken language of China - 说普通话 (shuō pǔtōnghuà) speak Mandarin.
- Different from 中文 (Zhōngwén, the Chinese language broadly, written and spoken) and 汉语 (Hànyǔ, the Chinese language as a linguistic system) - 普通话 specifically names the standardized spoken dialect based on Beijing pronunciation, as opposed to regional dialects like Cantonese or Shanghainese.
- 普通 alone just means "ordinary/common"; here it signals the "common speech" shared across regions.
Example sentences
- 我同事的普通话说得很好。 Wǒ tóngshìde pǔtōnghuà shuōde hěn hǎo.My coworker speaks Mandarin really well.