1.5 billion people can't be wrong...
I've been studying Mandarin Chinese for the past few months - my first serious attempt to learn a foreign language since my years in Spanish class throughout high school and college.
Well, this is a whole other kettle of fish.
Of course, there are the tones....Mandarin has four, which is not as onerous as the Vietnamese six (and even less so than Cantonese, which has nine). It still takes a tremendous mental effort to avoid saying 'horse' when you're trying to say 'mother'.
Pinyin is not the most helpful system of transliteration. The word 'to know' is written 'zhi dao' and pronounced 'Joo Dow'.
Finally there is the writing - thousands of characters to memorize. I am told that there is a system to all of this, but I haven't figured it out yet, and the explanations my teacher offers for each character are so arcane that they might as well be in secret code.
Still, progress is being made! I even recorded a podcast, detailing the proper way to greet a lady. Download it here.
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