Spoken Chinese is composed of a wide range of languages and dialects, with Mandarin being the official dialect of mainland China. Mandarin is also referred to by natives as Huayu 華語 (language of the Chinese), Guoyu 國語 (national language) and Putonghua 普通話 (common language). Over the history of China, ever since the country had developed into a nation in 221BC up until 1912 at the end of the last emperial dynasty - China never had a single, official language. During this period, many different dialects were spoken and evolved over time. It was only until the early 20th Century in which a common language was established to allow for national communication and to work against widespread illiteracy. Currently, more than 70% of the Chinese population speaks Mandarin

Cantonese is the second most predominantly spoken dialect of China. Most people who speak Cantonese live in the Guangzhou provincial areas as well as Hong Kong and Macau. Both Mandarin and Cantonese are derived from the Old and Middle Chinese language. Other major dialects in China include the Min, Gan, Wu and Kaijia or Hakka dialect.

Ancient Chinese carvings on stone has been defined by historians as the first example of Chinese Characters - also known as Hanzi 汉字. It has been said that these carvings or marks was a method done by the Ancient Chinese people to record what they saw in drawing. Many people suggest that these characters were in the form of pictographs as many had physical resemblance to physical object. However, some Chinese characters consist of symbols which represent sound. Through an understanding of Hanzi, we can collect somewhat of an understanding of the life of the people in Ancient China.

Watch this video for an in depth understanding of how todays Mandarin characters have greatly evolved over history!

These tones can be found as symbols above the letters of pinyin. There are four tones in Mandarin, we will use the example of "ma" to show how each tone looks like: