Mandarin Chinese voice overs: what you need to know

Mandarin, often called Mandarin Chinese, is a Sino-Tibetan language and the most popular Chinese dialect.

Mandarin is widely spoken in Northern and Southwestern China and Taiwan. Mandarin is also an official language in both of these countries as well as Singapore and the United Nations.

920 million people are native Mandarin Chinese speakers and another 200 million speak it as a second language.

Language History

The history of Mandarin Chinese as we know it today doesn’t stretch that far. Until the 20th century, there was no Standard Chinese that could be used in education, media, and politics. Instead, hundreds of regional dialects were used throughout China.

Mandarin became standardized in 1912 – when the Republic of China was established. Mandarin Chinese became the official and standard language of the republic.

Close Relations

Mandarin Chinese is mostly related to Burmese and Tibetan. Despite popular belief, Mandarin is unrelated to other neighbor languages, such as Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, or Japanese.

However, these neighboring languages were strongly influenced by Mandarin. For example, Korean and Japanese use Chinese symbols in their written language. Vietnamese also includes a variety of Chinese loanwords.

Mandarin Chinese vocabulary contains a number of loanwords from other languages. Mandarin mostly borrowed from Sanskrit and Persian, and more recently – from English.

At the same time, the English vocabulary has quite a few words of Chinese origin. For example, brainwashing, ketchup, and tea.

Accents and Voice Over Tips

Things get a bit tricky when we discuss Chinese Mandarin dialects. Chinese is a language family that contains hundreds of mutually unintelligible languages. Mandarin itself is the most common Chinese dialect.

In addition to Mandarin, six other Chinese dialects are usually distinguished: Wu, Gan, Xiang, Min, Kejia (Hakka), and Yue (Cantonese).

Mandarin includes a Beijing Dialect – a prestigious dialect that’s the basis of the Standard Chinese.

When recording a Mandarin Chinese voice over, it’s important to know that all Chinese language varieties are tonal. That means that each syllable could have different meanings, depending on how it’s pronounced.

Words per minute

The average spoken speed of Mandarin Chinese is around 300 syllables per minute, which is slower compared to English, which has a natural pace of 150 words per minute, or 200 syllables per minute.

Of course, just like with any other language, the pace of spoken Mandarin depends on the situation. For example, if you’re recording a fast-paced commercial, the tempo will be much higher than average. Recording an audiobook or a training video? Slow it down and let the listeners internalize the content.

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