Editing Standard language (section)

===Chinese===
[[Chinese language|Chinese]] consists of hundreds of [[varieties of Chinese|local varieties]], many of which are not mutually intelligible, usually classified into seven to ten major groups, including [[Mandarin Chinese|Mandarin]], [[Wu Chinese|Wu]], [[Yue Chinese|Yue]], [[Hakka Chinese|Hakka]] and [[Min Chinese|Min]].
Before the 20th century, most Chinese spoke only their local variety.
For two millennia, formal writing had been done in [[Classical Chinese]], a style modelled on the [[Chinese classics|classics]] and far removed from any contemporary speech.{{sfnp|Norman|1988|pp=108–109, 245}}
As a practical measure, officials of the late imperial dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using a [[Mandarin (late imperial lingua franca)|common language based on Mandarin varieties]], known as ''Guānhuà'' (literally "speech of officials").{{sfnp|Norman|1988|pp=133, 136}}

In the early 20th century, many Chinese intellectuals argued that the country needed a standardized language.
By the 1920s, Literary Chinese had been replaced as the written standard by [[written vernacular Chinese]], which was based on Mandarin dialects.{{sfnp|Norman|1988|pp=133–134}}
In the 1930s, [[Standard Chinese]] was adopted, with its pronunciation based on the [[Beijing dialect]], but with vocabulary also drawn from other Mandarin varieties and its syntax based on the written vernacular.{{sfnp|Norman|1988|p=135}}
It is the official spoken language of the [[China|People's Republic of China]] (where it is called ''Pǔtōnghuà'' "common speech"), the de facto official language of the [[Taiwan|Republic of China]] governing Taiwan (as ''Guóyǔ'' "national language") and one of the official languages of [[Singapore]] (as ''Huáyǔ'' "Chinese language").{{sfnp|Norman|1988|pp=136–137}}
[[Standard Chinese]] now dominates public life, and is much more widely studied than any other [[Varieties of Chinese|variety of Chinese]].{{sfnp|Norman|1988|p=247}}