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I don't really understand some of the seemingly newly coined words. But well, yes, good, you've got back to the topic (but are you named Sino btw?).
Sometimes I do doubt whether I should post at all when you have wikipedia, even though I'm quite sure that wikipedia isn't enough, and could be sometimes misleading.
Just like many other "modern" languages, Mandarin Chinese, while having inherited "a lot" (a convenient word to use) of features from the "Oracle Bone Writing", is surely vastly different from what my ancestors spoke some thousands of years ago.
There's of course much to say about HOW great the differences are. The ancient Chinese spoke consonantal clusters, (virtually) no tones, used less characters, borrowed a lot of characters from time to time, used more monosyllabic (one-character) words, had a rich literary (but far removed from the public) tradition...
and now, much is different, and the characters you can see today... the easiest ones were the eldest, but over 90% of others were borrowed, coined or created for strange reasons over the course of history. So, here you are, like many other languages, the (easiest) characters are per se basic, root characters that derive others, and you can learn to read Chinese through a "gradual approach".
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