ABSTRACT
The area occupied by Mandarin languages constitutes the prevailing part of the territory in which Chinese is used, and Mandarin speakers make up the largest linguistic group of the Chinese population. Only one Mandarin language, namely Pekinese, is a language of written literature. This language constitutes the basis for Modern Standard Chinese and differs considerably from the official Chinese language, predominantly in its lexicon. The chapter presents the classification of the Mandarin languages formulated by Yuan Jiahua. Yuan classified these languages into the following four groups: Northern languages, North-Western Mandarin languages, South-Western Mandarin languages and Jianghuai languages. Mandarin languages have tonal systems that are predominantly based on four tones. The seven-tone system in the Mandarin language of Nantong in Jiangsu Province is rather exceptional. All Mandarin languages undergo relatively little change under the impact of the neighborhood of tones, although assimilations go further than in Pekinese – a tongue that is exceptionally resistant to them.
