Good luck. Chinese is a real toughie. I have a degree in the language and have also lived in Taiwan for several years already. Not to rain on anyone's parade, but courses that promise you instant results, or for you to learn Chinese in a ridiculous short period of time are seriously under-selling the difficulty and steepness of the learning curve, Honestly? The first five years are the worst, it gets slightly easier after that. Mastery? A life-long task.

Robert Thé, Taipei, Taiwan

You may like to try www.iMandarinPod.com, another Chinese podcast to teach Chinese language and culture. You will find out so many people around the world, like you, are learning Chinese online. and it's easy to get help when you needed.

Xin Li, Boston, USA

Well, if you feel discouraged learning Chinese, first learn machine language, reading and writing in bits, ones (1) and zeros (0). Everything else is simple compared to machine language.

Shirley Jackson, Oliver, BC, Canada

As a student in London and native born in Hong Kong, I taught Cantonese Chinese for British-born Chinese youngsters every weekend. To my surprise mistakes my students made were different from those learning Chinese in Hong Kong. If you are to learn Chinese as a foreign language, extra care has to be taken in sentence structure and writing.

C. Chui, London , UK

Don't worry.Chinese characters also have orderliness which can help you to remember them.For example,except the Chinese hieroglyphs,large numbers of characters can be separated into two parts.One part relates to its meaning,and the other part relates to its pronunciation.And that is very useful for your learning.

Xue Wang, Xi'an, China

no wonder,chinese is much more difficult to learn than english.for there is too deep culture in the chinese.You can't deny the 5000 years history works too much in my ways.

Zidan, Paris, France

Don't worry.The more difficult you think, the less the confidence you have.Chinese characters also have orderliness.Except ideograph,large numbers of characters can be separated into two parts.One relates to its meaning,and the other represents its pronunciation.That is very helpful for remembering and using.

Xue Wang, Xi'an, China

Don't worry.The more difficult you think, the less the confidence you have.Chinese characters also have orderliness.Except ideograph,large numbers of characters can be separated into two parts.One relates to its meaning,and the other represents its pronunciation.That is very helpful for remembering and using.

Xue Wang, Xi'an, China

I spent 12 years working in Hong Kong, during that time I put a lot of effort in to learning both Mandarin and Cantonese with some success. I can reiterate that although this course is great for background, immersion is the only sure way to get results. Ironically, reading and writing I've only been able to tackle properly by living in the UK, not working and having, therefore, lots of time !

Ben Zabulis, Nottingham, England

I'm a Chinese.I'm very glad to see many people study Chinese here.

fei wu, Beijing, China

As an English chap who studied Mandarin for two years at Nanyang University, Singapore, back in the 1970's, I believe that to speak Mandarin is not as difficult as we tend to imagine. Reading and writing, are, of course much harder.
I once told a Chinese friend, that there was not point in me learning Mandarin, as so many Chinese people spoke such excellent English.
His replied, "It will help you to be accepted and Chinese businessmen will trust you more than trusting other Chinese. They know that you can't be as smart!"

T. J. Bearder, Exmouth,

The free CD is great but I cannot find the conversations, listening and understanding strategies for Chinese which are supposed to be on this page. Help.

Thanks

Janet Storey, Penicuik, Scotland

Good luck 'stupid one'. You won't regret it. I have been learning on and off for 12 years and I can say categorically that the first 500 characters are the hardest. You really need to listen to the language as much as possible and not worry too much about not understanding - let the rhythm wash into you. Mandarin is great in itself but it also really helped me with my Japanese which, after thousands of hours of study, is sufficiently good to allow me to run a small research group at the University of Tokyo. I listen to Chinesepod to keep my Mandarin topped up. The downloads are free (although there is a pay for service which gives you access to a whole range of extras).

Matthew Salter, Tokyo, Japan