01 Difference between Chinese and Mandarin

What the difference between Chinese and Mandarin?

Mandarin and Chinese 
Mandarin is 

Correct：the language which China administration designates as an official language. 

Wrong：the language which Chinese use.

In China (East Asian landmass), there are many dialects , like Cantonese,Hokkien ,Shandong dialect, Sichuan dialect....etc.

All of them are called as Chinese.

Chinese is the collective name for the language family on East Asian landmass .

Most of Chinese dialects don't exist their own character system.

They all share the only and same character system.

(people also create some Chinese characters to correspond their dialects, like in Cantonese , people speak "he" as "佢keoy4" instead of "他tā")

Therefore, Chinese character system is fixed basically, but pronunciations are not.

That's why each China government from history has to designate an official language as Mandarin, to fix the pronunciation of Mandarin.

If China government didn't designate an official language, people only could communicate by writing once they leave their hometown. How terrible is it !

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In the ancient, we call the official language as 官話[话] guān huà.

In the modern China, we call it as 普通話 pǔ tōng huà

In Taiwan, we call it as 國語[国语] guó yǔ

In other words,Mandarin is not consistent and fixed on history.

It depended on where were China administrations located.

If China administrations were located at the north, then they were using Northern dialect as Mandarin.

China

China is a name to call the biggest and powerful country on build on East Asian landmass .

So, though there were many dynasties of China, but they were in complete independence  and lack of continuity.

Just like the Yuan Dynasty, it was founded by the Mongols, but we still call it China.

So ,what stuffs are different ?

Fortunately, the pronunciation of 普通話 and 國語 are same.

However, China simplified the Chinese characters.

But, Taiwan don't follow up, we still use traditional Chinese characters.

1) Writing

People in Taiwan write Traditional Chinese;

People in China write Simplified Chinese.

2) Accent：
The standard of Mandarin(普通話 and 國語) is fixed.

However, people from different areas may speak different accents.

Because they may mix the Mandarin accents with their local dialect.

3) Vocabulary

People in Taiwan and China speak with different vocabularies sometimes.

Just like ,"the chips" in the U.S;

               "the crisps" in Britain.

Both of them means same stuff.

During HSK 1-6 ,you'll not learn this kind of vocabularies than 5 words.

Though people speak with different vocabularies, thanks for the internet age, people can understand each other without much concern.

This web is shared by Taiwanese accent

The blog author is from Taiwan, so this web is shared based on Taiwanese accent mainly.
I'll also share the difference 國語 and 普通話.