Mandarin Chinese
Mandarin is written with Chinese characters called Hànzì (漢字 or 汉字) which literally means "Han characters". Each Hànzì has its own pronunciation and meaning. An ordinary dictionary will contain about 10,000 characters.  Spoken Mandarin uses very many compound words, words that combine meanings the way English does in such terms as "machine gun," "fire truck," "playground," etc.