Chinese characters take a lot of effort to learn.

But, to learn to speak the language, make sure you learn Pinyin, the official romanisation of the PRC.

I wished my teachers had taught me Pinyin when I first learnt Chinese, but in late 70s, and early 80s, we used another system - Zhuyin, but we were not taught well in this system. In the old days when I didn't know how to pronunce a character, and didn't know Pinyin, I made lots of mistakes in my pronunciations.

You could start looking at The uses of Hanyu pinyin, written by Professor Victor Mair, on Language Log.

Over the years I've come to realise that Pinyin is a wonderful gift to the world, to enabble you to learn to speak Chinese.