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.
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Even if you don't know any chinese characters, you can still read Chinese as long as you can read pinyin but make sure you know the tones!New comment
Hi Hui,
Indeed. This is the power of pinyin. If we teach the whole world Pinyin, then people will be able to communicate rather easily. Tone is important of course, but sometimes you could still work out the message even the tones are not perfect.