Origin of Chinese Characters 

As we know, written Chinese is not an alphabetic language. We call Chinese characters as 'squared characters' and they are. They seems very complicated and hard to learn. But Chinese is the most used language in the world and certainly one of the most beautiful languages. It will be interesting to know its origin.
The development of Chinese characters can be dated back to about 4,500 years as discovered at Yanghe, Shandong Province in recent years. There are about a dozen pottery wine vessels unearthed, which have a character each. Those characters are quite close to the oracle inscriptions carved by the ancients of the Shang Dynasty (16th to 11th century B. C.). 

Mandarin, Chinese, Putonghua 

How many standard languages does Chinese have? 

Putonghua -- "Normal language". 

More than half a century ago the conclusion of a long-standing debate on the standard national language in China was formulated as: "Consisting of the sounds of the Beijing dialect, based on the lexicon of the Northern Chinese dialect, and the grammar of the written language (¥Õ¸Ü bai2 hua4) used for communication between the Han people (º~¥Á±Ú Han4 min2 zu2)." In English putonghua is known as Mandarin -- the word is derived from the name of Chinese emperial government officials who were supposed to use the standard language. 


Beijing hua. -- "Beijing speak" or "Beijing dialect" 

First of all, the Beijing dialect is a dialect, though the one whereon putonghua is based. It is the way common Beijingers speak in their daily life -- with all the features typical for vernacular.

Guoyu-- National language 

The term is used for the variety of Standard Chinese as accepted in Taiwan. For the most of Taiwanese, it is the medium of education rather than their native language. However, through the decades of standardized compulsory education, it has become the core of vernacular speech for the post-war generations. The younger the person is, the more likely their Standard Chinese will be fluent. 

Guoyu's standard form is almost identical to Putonghua, but such typical Beijing phenomena as qing-sheng-fication and er-fication are much less common. Also, some consonants (most notably zh-, ch-, sh-) may be pronounced softer than in Mainland China, while the 3rd tone pronounced in Taiwan as low flat rather than the Mainland way -- sharply falling and then rising back up. 

Huayu 

This is the Standard Chinese -- as opposed to Chinese dialects -- used as (once again) the medium of education by ethnic Chinese in Singapore, Malaysia and other countries. It is more of a literary tradition, since the vernacular for the most of the Overseas Chinese community are various Chinese dialects. Its written form is also known as Bei-hua ¥Õ¸Ü (bai2 hua4). Save Singapore, it almost invariably uses the Traditional script for writing. 


TV Standard 

In a number of countries, the TV speak is considered to be the standard language. However, Beijing TV anchorpersons are (in)famous for their unnatural forced intonations (claimed to add more pathos and dramatism to their commentaries) that they themselves never use in normal conversation. 

As if to make good for heavy usage of vernacular dialect in Taiwanese daily speech -- or in a bid to out-Mandarin the mainlanders -- the Taiwanese TV folks enunciate in a far more natural fashion their their Beijing colleagues. Nevertheless, they still fall short of what could be called super-correct Chinese -- all because of their Taiwanese consonants and occasional usage of somewhat obsolete forms. 

Most probably, the only real speakers of Standard Chinese are professors in major central universities.