Mandarin is Pu Tong Hua or common Chinese.  

Standard Chinese or Mandarin (Putonghua, based on the Beijing dialect)

taken from the cia world-factbook

here is the page
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ch.html

Languages:

Standard Chinese or Mandarin (Putonghua, based on the Beijing dialect), Yue (Cantonese), Wu (Shanghainese), Minbei (Fuzhou), Minnan (Hokkien-Taiwanese), Xiang, Gan, Hakka dialects, minority languages (see Ethnic groups entry)

note: Mongolian is official in Nei Mongol, Uighur is official in Xinjiang Uygur, and Tibetan is official in Xizang (Tibet)

speaking of  Mandarin i never got the chicken why Mandarin  i know you there has to be a simple anwser

Mandarin originally refered to the lose standard spoken dialect spoken by (predominantly northern) government officals. From the point of view of the Portuguese and, later, Brits operating mostly in the South, anything northern was associated with government officals, "Mandarin" being the Sanskrit word for beaurocrat.

We often refer to Mandarin to mean any northern dialect at all, as usually they are not *too* far from the Beijing standard. The Chinese tend to call this "Chinese" and call anything southern "dialect". But the might also call a very small regional accent a dialect. Thus the confusion.

Mandarin can also mean "putonghua" or "guoyu". The standard dialect modelled around how Beijing University professors speak, but for complicated historical reasons, with an accent more resembling Henan. You'll find the man on the street in Beijing rarely speaks putonghua, 哥们儿.

So anyway, Mandarin can refer to one thing, or another thing that is a subset of the one thing, and Chinesse don't really have a word for that one big thing. Thus even more confusion.

I was reading  Seagrave how some officials of importance had "mandrin buttons" but I have not seen any reference outside of Seagrave regarding said buttons.

If you speak too much chinese you will turn into an orange.

Mandarin represents more or less an uniform spoken form of the Chinese language based loosely on the dialect of Beijing and used by officials in the late imperial China. There are several kinds of Chinese languages, such as Cantonese (guangdong hua), Shanghainese (shanghai hua), Mandarin is named putong hua.

www.mandaringarden.org

Yeah， Mandarin means Chinese language!
Learn Chinese at Mandarin Garden !!!
http://vip.enjoyshanghai.com/live-learn/languagetraining/mandarin-garden--wwwmandaringardenorg_13389.htm