Although not unique, is one of a very small group of languages in which the written form does not vary with different spoken forms. Therefore, although a Cantonese speaker listening to a Mandarin speaker may not understand anything that is said, he or she could read the most complex and technical of speeches and understand everything.

To illustrate this, take the following phrase: 'one hundred and twenty three'. To a Mexico speaker who understands no English, the above sentence could mean anything. However, replace that sentence with '123' and suddenly the Mexico speaker reads 'sto dwadeczia cze' while an English speaker reads ' one hundred and twenty three', a French speaker 'cent vingt-trois' and so on. In Chinese, it is not simply numbers which can be represented without spelling, but the entire language.

In total there are over 45,000 Chinese characters; however, a vocabulary of 4,000 would be good, and a vocabulary of 9,000 unlikely in anyone without a university degree. In a bid to increase literacy in China, the government has simplified many elements of Chinese characters, making them far easier to memorise. Literacy in China is now at 80% of the adult population, compared to say India at 50% or South Africa at 81%. This is not a small achievement given the complexity of the written form of the language, and the low base level of literacy in 1949 at the end of the civil war.

If the written form of the language is complex, the spoken variations are just as staggering. There are eight major language groups with some 600 dialects - all sharing the same written form. There are a further 136 non-Chinese languages spoken in China. All Chinese languaages use tones to distinguish different words.

Mandarin, which is spoken in the Beijing region and in northern China generally, has four common tones. Cantonese, spoken in southeastern China, has nine tones and is quite different from Mandarin. A simple word such as 'ma' can have a variety of meaning depending on which tone is used - meaning anything from mother to horse. The closest English speakers get to varying the meaning of a word using tones is interogative words such as 'what?' which can mean anything form the literally 'what' to an expression of disblelief 'What!' or a dimissive word reach really means 'go away'. The concept is far more complex in Chinese, and the difference in meaning can be extreme - and tones are used for every single word. 'Mai' can mean buy or sell depending on the tone!

For all its complexity, the Chinese language has one saving grace - its grammar is fairly straight forward. Word order for English speakers is not unusual. All verbs are regular, and there are no tenses in the sense of English verbs changing from the present (going) to the past (went) and the future (will go). There is no definite or indefinite article ('the' or 'a') no plurals or irregular adjectives. In English big bigger biggest does not correspond to good better best, but in Chinese, such words are always regular.

Learning Chinese is a challenge, but learn Mandarin and you will be able to communicate with over 20% of the world's population. Today a standardised Mandarin known as Putonghua (literally 'the common language'), is the official language of government and education, and everyone in China is taught to speak it. It is essentially the same dialect that is spoken in Taiwan.