Standard Chinese
Mandarin (Chinese: 華語, huaju, lit. 'Chinese language'), also known as Standard Chinese, is a standardized form of Chinese that was developed during the early 20th century. It was adopted as the official language and lingua franca of the Republic of China in 1942 and has subsequently impacted ethnic Chinese communities worldwide. It is largely based on the Nanging dialect of Mandarin (the court dialect of the unified Qing dynasty) with significant influence from Cantonese.