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Pinyin, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan.

It is often used to teach Standard Chinese, which is normally written using Chinese characters.

The system includes four diacritics denoting tones.

Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet, and also in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters.

Mandarin is a group of related varieties of Chinese spoken across most of northern and southwestern China.

The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of Standard Mandarin or Standard Chinese.

Because most Mandarin dialects are found in the north, the group is sometimes referred to as the Northern dialects.

Many local Mandarin varieties are not mutually intelligible.

Nevertheless, Mandarin is often placed first in any list of languages by number of native speakers (with nearly a billion).

Chinese dictionaries date back over two millennia to the Eastern Zhou dynasty, which is a significantly longer lexicographical history than any other language.

There are hundreds of dictionaries for the Chinese language, and this article introduces some of the most important.

Chinese as a foreign or second language is the study of the Chinese varieties by non-native speakers.

Increased interest in China from those outside has led to a corresponding interest in the study of Standard Chinese ("Mandarin") as a foreign language, the official language of mainland China and Taiwan.

However, the teaching of Chinese both within and outside China is not a recent phenomenon.

Westerners began learning different Chinese varieties in the 16th century.

Within China, Mandarin became the official language in the early 20th century.

Mandarin also became the official language of Taiwan when the Kuomintang took over control from Japan after World War II.

English is a West Germanic language that was first spoken in early medieval England and is now the global lingua franca.

Named after the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes that migrated to England, it ultimately derives its name from the Anglia (Angeln) peninsula in the Baltic Sea.

It is most closely related to the Frisian languages, although its vocabulary has been significantly influenced by other Germanic languages in the early medieval period, and later by Romance languages, particularly French.

English is either the official language or one of the official languages in almost 60 sovereign states.

It is the most commonly spoken language in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand, and is widely spoken in some areas of the Caribbean, Africa, and South Asia.

It is the third most common native language in the world, after Mandarin and Spanish.

It is the most widely learned second language and an official language of the United Nations, of the European Union, and of many other world and regional international organisations.

It is the most widely spoken Germanic language, accounting for at least 70% of speakers of this Indo-European branch.