Almost every one of China's founding fathers, including Chairman Mao, spoke with a distinct, strong accent of their hometown dialect, yet they all pushed Mandarin as the national language of China and that pushing and shoving continues today.

They likely never envisaged that half a century later their campaign to promote Mandarin, to help unify the country, would trigger a linguistic tug of war between supporters of local dialects and the masses of Mandarin speakers.

Today, more people speak Chinese than any other language in the world and it remains as rich, dynamic, diverse and as peculiar as the country itself.

Although people in China share the same written language -- Chinese ideograms or characters, which have been in use for three thousand years -- the pronunciation of identical characters differs from region to region.

Mandarin, which in Chinese is called Putonghua and literally means 'common talk' is taught in every school in the country and is China's standard lingua franca. Yet most Chinese are verbally bilingual speaking not only Mandarin with a regional dialect but also a completely different dialect of Chinese.

The people of Shanghai, for example, would say "Nong si sahani" to say they are from Shanghai, which in Mandarin they would be pronounced Wo shi Shanghai ren. Meanwhile people from Northwest Shaanxi's capital Xi'an would say, with a pronounced diphthong on the first syllable "Ne ce xing'an ren," (Wo shi Xi'an ren.) to declare where they are from. In Beijing, the country's and Mandarin's capital, locals would say proudly 'Wo shi Beijing ren' but with an accent that makes the speaker sound as if they had a mouthful of marbles.

If it were not for the unifying Mandarin the residents of the three cities mentioned above would not able to communicate over the phone although they could easily write text messages to each other.

The Chinese people are extremely proud of their dialects and of their Mandarin accents. As soon as someone speaks even a few words of Mandarin people will know if they from the north or south or west. In a city like Beijing which is home to 4 million people from other parts of the country many serendipitous friendships have been formed when someone overhears a stranger speaking Mandarin with their local accent. Once they hear the familiar Mandarin accent they will immediately revert to their dialect and launch a conversation that would be incomprehensible to nearby Beijingers.

This pride in language has given rise to a new movement with the simple slogan, "Safeguarding the Dialects". Originating in better-off areas such as Shanghai and Zhejiang, dialect safe-guarders take some umbrage at the popularization of Mandarin as they see it as a slight against their distinctiveness.

This yearning for distinctiveness has also meant television shows using the local vernacular are springing up around Sichuan, Zhejiang and Northeast China.

The television ratings organization AC Nielsen shows that news programs using the local Hangzhou dialect, in the capital of East China's Zhejiang Province, have received a 12.6 rating, five times higher than other news programs in the city.

The central government, however, is still pushing Mandarin as the common speak in all locales and requires broadcasters to get approval from national or provincial authorities which put limits on programs using local dialects. Still every nationally televised program in China has running subtitles which allow everyone in the country to follow the speaker.

"Promoting Mandarin doesn't mean the authorities will get rid of local dialects." said Chen Zhangtai, a member of the Chinese language work commission under the Ministry of Education.

"It (the promotion of Mandarin) aims to ensure national cohesion and facilitate communication for people from different regions." Chen noted.

With more than a thousand dialects in the country, most of which are mutually unintelligible, the country continues to strivefor a common speak.

While Mandarin is understood by the vast majority of the country, it's estimated that more than 80 percent of the population still use a local dialect in their daily life.

In remote, isolated mountainous areas, there are so many dialects that people in neighbouring villages often cannot communicate with each other. It used to be that way all over Chinaand is also why everyone in the country can count to ten using the fingers on one hand. For example spreading the thumb and forefinger while making a fist represents eight as the hand gesture resembles the written character.

"Most Chinese could only speak one local dialect before 1949 when New China was founded," Chen said. "More and more people are 'bilingual' nowadays, as they can speak both Mandarin and a dialect or a language of an ethnic minority."

"It's pretty tricky for the authorities to find a balance between popularizing Mandarin and conserving dialects." Chen added.

The authorities did call a halt to the broadcast of the American "Tom and Jerry" and the Japanese "Crayon Sin-Chan" cartoons which were dubbed into Sichuanese, Shanghainese and became hit shows on local TV stations.

Qian Zengyi, well-known linguist and professor with the Shandong University, said: "This is far from a life-and-death battle."

Now that both cell phones and televisions are seemingly the most ubiquitous products in the country the languages of China arebeing enriched by each other. A term deemed too dialectal today may find widespread use by all people tomorrow, Qian said.

Some linguists in China believe the real "invisible hand" in the evolution of dialects is economic.

"Some little-used dialects might wither or vanish, but major branches of Chinese such as Cantonese, Shanghainese and Hakka facelittle danger," said Chen, adding that these languages are also being spreading outside their traditional regions as tens of millions of migrant workers move about the country lending words and phrases to local languages.

And now, more than 50 years after Chairman Mao spoke to the masses in Tian'anmen Square in his heavy Hunan accent, the Chineselanguage is becoming internationalized as the odd English word creeps into the local vernacular. This means many Chinese people might describe their language and all it's diversity by saying it's 'cool'.

Editor: Yan