speaking chinese

Usually foreigners studying Mandarin 普通话 (lit. "universal language"), based in the northern dialects, pronunciation and Beijing-oriented modern spoken language. Conducted in Mandarin education, produced radio and TV broadcasting.
Chinese is tonal. In Mandarin, there are four basic tones and neutral. The value depends on the tone of speech. Example with the syllable ma (written in Latin letters): 妈 mā (mother), 麻 má (hemp), 马 mǎ (horse), 骂 mà (curse), 吗 ma (interrogative particle).
Certain complexity is the presence of homophones - words that are pronounced the same but are spelled differently. Associated with them various signs, jokes, wishes. Availability homophones does not allow to switch to alphabetic writing. Sometimes the number of homophones can reach several tens or even hundreds.