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Mandarin. Mandarin is the largest branch of the Sinitic languages. Mandarin varieties are natively spoken by 70 percent of all Chinese speakers, spread over a large geographical area that stretches from Yunnan in the southwest to Xinjiang in the northwest and Heilongjiang in the northeast. Its spread is generally attributed to the overall greater ease of travel in the North China Plain compared to the more mountainous south, combined with the relatively recent spread of northern varieties to frontier areas.
Many varieties of Mandarin, such as those of the Southwest and the Lower Yangtze, are not mutually intelligible with the Beijing dialect. Nevertheless, Mandarin as a group is often placed first in lists of languages by number of native speakers. Because Mandarin originated in North China and most Mandarin varieties are found north of the Yangtze River, the group is sometimes referred to as Northern Chinese.
Malay. Malay is an Austronesian language native to several islands of Maritime Southeast Asia and the Malay Peninsula on mainland Asia. The language is an official language of Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia, where the standardised variety is known as Indonesian; Indonesian is also one of the working languages of Timor-Leste. Malay is the ethnic language of Malays in Sumatra, Borneo and surrounding islands in Indonesia, southeast Philippines, southern Thailand, and the Southern Province of Sri Lanka. Altogether, it is spoken as a first language by about 80 million people and as a first or second language by close to 300 million.
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