Chinese is part of the Sino-Tibetan language family, and is the official language of People's Republic of China. Hong Kong, Taiwan (the Republic of China), Macau, Singapore, Mauritius and the United States also have considerable numbers of Chinese speakers. In Chinese, the name of the language is 中文 ("zhōngwén") which means "middle language" (derived from the name of China itself, 中国 or "middle country").

There are 873,000,000 people in the world that speak Chinese as their native language, and 178,000,000 people who speak Chinese as their second languagehttp://www.vistawide.com/languages/top_30_languages.htm. However, "Chinese" includes many separate dialects,, including Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka, Wu, Jin, Huainan, Xiang, Gan, Min, and Pinghuahttp://www.glossika.com/en/dict/faq.php. The dialect that has been deemed as "official" and that is the standard language of China is Mandarin Chinese (普通话 or "pǔtōnghuà," meaning "common speech"). This dialect is taught to all foreign language students, and will be the dialect referred to as "Chinese" in this article.

Despite the fact that Chinese is generally an "SVO" language (meaning they organize their sentences "subject-verb-object" like English), Chinese is consistently listed as one of the most difficult languages to learnhttp://www.language-learning-advisor.com/hardest-language-to-learn-survey.html. This is mostly due to the writing system employed by Chinese speakers (where one or two characters represent an idea, noun, verb, object, etc., unlike the alphabet system in English where one letter is meant to represent one sound).

Chinese characters have a lot in common with Egyptian hieroglyphics. They originally started off as a way to draw common objects. For example, the character for "man" or "person" is 人 (which is "rén" in pinyin, see How to Speak Chinese for pronunciation rules). It is clear that 人 represents a person standing on two legs. However, it is different from hieroglyphics in that it is very simplified - it does not have a head, or arms, or anything else (see this Chinese etymology dictionary to see how the drawing of 人 has changed and simplified over time).

Though Chinese characters been modified and simplified throughout history, the most recent round of simplification occurred in 1949http://www.omniglot.com/writing/chinese_simplified.htm. These "simplified characters" (in contrast with the earlier "traditional characters") are still being used in China today. However, not all Chinese-speaking countries use simplified characters. Some still use traditional characters (for example, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau).

Traditional characters are slightly more complicated than simplified characters, but they also reveal more of the meaning behind the word. For example, the word for "electricity" is 電 in traditional and 电 as simplified. 電 shows the combination of 雨 (rain) and 田 (ground) to show the concept of "lightning" or "electricity," whereas the more simplified form of the character simply has the lower part, 电. Another example is 車 (vehicle) - drawn to resemble a top view of a cart with wheels, but which loses that symbology in the simplified 车. To save the effort of having to draw a box in the middle, a quick and simple dash is drawn. The same occurs in 鳥 (bird) which is written 鸟 as a simplified character. You can read more about the rules for how characters and their components ("radicals") are simplified here (as well as the good and the bad of having simplified characters here at an article in the New York Times).

Let's get started on a few of the basic principles of how to write Chinese beginning with a video for the characters of the Zodiac. http://www.12chinesezodiacsigns.com/chinesezodiacsigns/characterchinesezodiacsigns.shtml

Each line of a character is called a "stroke," and each stroke must traditionally be written in a particular order. More details (with pictures) may be found at this site. Here is a listing of the general rules one must follow when writing Chinese characters:

1. Top before bottom
2. Left before right
3. Left vertical stroke (usually) before top horizontal stroke
4. Bottom horizontal stroke last
5. Center stroke before wings
6. Horizontal strokes before intersecting vertical strokes
7. Left-falling strokes before right-falling stokes
8. Minor strokes (often) last

Therefore in the character 体, the 亻must be drawn first (the top line, then the vertical line), then the 本 part - first the the topmost horizontal line, then the middle vertical line, then the two diagonal lines (the left first, then the right, drawn from the middle line outwards), followed by the horizontal line at the bottom. The whole animation of stroke order can be seen in the demonstration below.

This is an arbitrary practice that does nothing to the speed up of writing the character, but is still an important part of "properly" writing Chinese.

There are not thousands of unique characters in Chinese, as many would believe. Instead, all Chinese characters are made from rearranging a few hundred pieces of characters called "radicals." Knowing the radicals will help you either know what the character means, or how it's pronounced, or both.

For example, 语 (or 語 in traditional) contains the radical 讠(or 言) to the left. The radical 讠(or 言) represents "speech" and 吾 is an archaic way of saying "my" or "our," and is pronounced "wǔ." Therefore, 语 is pronounced "wǔ" and means "my/our speech" or "language."http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=worddict&wdrst=0&wdqb=%E8%AF%AD

Here is a small sample of some Chinese radicals (note, some radicals are characters on their own - like 口and 女 - others cannot exist on their own - like 亠and 凵 - and must be combined with other radicals to create a freestanding character):

• 亠 (tóu) - lid
• 口 (kǒu) - mouth
• 土 (tǔ) - earth
• 女 (nǚ) - woman
• 子 (zǐ) - child
• 山 (shān) - mountain
• 月 (yuè) - moon
• 生 (shēng) - life
• 目 (mù) - eye
• 几 (jī) - table
• 凵 (qǔ) - open box
• 力 (lì) - power

You can find a very good listing of all the radicals at YellowBridge.com http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/radicals.php

Now that you understand the basics of how characters are formed and written, try out these useful phrases, found at www.omniglot.com.http://www.omniglot.com

• Hello! - 你好 (nǐ hǎo)
• How are you? - 你好吗 (nǐ hǎo ma)
• I'm fine, thanks. And you? - 我很好，你呢？ (wǒ hěn hǎo, nǐ ne)
• What's your name? 你叫什么名字 (nǐ jiào shénme míngzi)
• My name is ... - 我叫 ... (wǒ jiào ...)
• Where are you from? - 你是哪国人 (nǐ shì nǎguórén)
• I'm from America / I'm American - 我是美国人 (wǒ shì měi​guó​rén)
• Goodbye - 再见 (zàijiàn)
• Bye - 拜拜 (bàibài)
• I don't understand - 我不懂 (wǒ bùdǒng)
• Please say that again - 再说一边 (zài shuō yībiān)
• Can you please write it down? - 麻烦你写一下，好不好? (máfan nǐ xiě yīxià, hǎo bù hǎo?)
• Do you speak Mandarin? - 你会不会讲普通话？ (nǐ huìbúhuì jiǎng pŭtōnghuà)
• Yes, a little - 会，一点儿 (huì, yīdiǎr)
• How do you say ... in Mandarin? - ... 中文怎么说？ (... zhōngwén zěnme shuō)
• Thank you - 谢谢 (xièxie)
• I love you - 我爱你 (wǒ ài nǐ)
• Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year - 圣诞快乐 新年快乐 (shèngdàn kuàilè xīnnián kuàilè)
• Happy (Chinese) New Year - 恭喜发财 (gōngxǐ fācái)
• Happy Birthday - 生日快乐 (shēngrì kuàilè)
• One language is never enough - 一种语言永远不够 (yīzhǒng yǔyán yǒngyuǎn bùgòu)