About Chinese language

Most linguists believe that writing was invented in China during the later part of the 2nd millenium BC and there is no evidence to suggest migration of writing from elsewhere. The earliest recognizable written Chinese date from 1500-950 BC (Shang dynasty) and were inscribed on turtle shells - "oracle bones."

There are somewhere between 40,000 to 70,000 characters in the Chinese language, depending on how it is counted. The largest Chinese dictionaries include about 56,000 characters, but most of them are ancient, obscure, or rare variant forms.

The characters were originally pictures of people, animals or other natural things, but over the centuries they have become increasingly stylized and no longer resemble the things they used to represent. Many of the characters are compounds of two or more characters.

You need about 3,000 characters to be 99% functional, such as reading newspapers, writing letters and daily communication. To read Chinese literature, technical writings or classical Chinese though, you need to be familiar with about 5,000 and more characters.

Each character is made up of strokes, from one stroke to as many as 30 strokes in a particular character.

The phonology of Mandarin allows close to 1000 syllables that are distinct in sound. On top of the about 1000 pronunciations, there are also intonations of each pronunciation. Mandarin Chinese has 4 tones.