Chinese

Chinese forms one of the branches of the Sino-Tibetan language family and over one billion people can name it as their native language. The relationship between the spoken and written Chinese language is rather complex. Its written form has no clues as to how it is actually pronounced. The tone system also is a pain because there are many homophones in Chinese only distinguishable by the four tones. Even this is often not enough unless the actual context and exact phrase are identified.