DonnieDarko

After a 4 month later and your professor tells you that you are going to have a semester or final exam over everything you have learned, you are going to be scrambling to find anything and in these cases online tutorials are almost like a saving grace.

also beautiful and necessary, no matter how many times I'll tell a person to spell those words it's always wrong.

I would count myself as a fast reader, but if I need to retain the information for a test then it is obvious I would read it slow , but if it's just a light novel that I am picking up on a weekend then yeah, I'll tear through that book like a wild man.

Yeah I'll use it basically use it whenever I find anything remotely funny or just as a filler for small talk, it's pretty much gotten to a point where it is almost an instinct to use it.

"By definition perfection is unattainable, but that does not give reason to not strive for it" -Paladin "Justice demands retribution" -Paladin and basically anything that Mark Twain would say <3

I also think stroke order is a crucial part of learning, memorizing characters is so much easier when you arent just trying to memorize an entire thing but rather a series of strokes and really helped me early on when i was learning. Also be really comfy with pinyin because that will follow you pretty much forever, when you are typing on a computer it is absolutely necessary for you to understand pinyin and tone of words.

Its actually not that much harder, the grammer and everything is the same but the characters are different most of them are just more strokes than your usual simplified characters and have a few more strokes but other than that the two are basically alike on most terms

I believe is easier to pick up than most languages. The grammar is pretty straight forward as most times the sentence will make sense when you think about it, but it is not the same as English if you try to directly translate from English to Mandarin you will most likely get it wrong. But after the initial phase of learning what stroke order and a general word base of about 200-300 characters it will become increasingly easier and easier.

Living abroad is such a great way to learn a language, at first it seems impossible , but because you are constantly around and it and its all you hear, you pick up on it very quickly, however if you are learning strictly based off books and a teacher, I would a say a solid 2 years of learning will do you good and have you very well off if you put a lot of effort into it. Chinese although it is easier than English there is no alphabet to write a character that's only for pinyin which doesn't help if you can' read or write a character. Every stroke must be memorized which is no easy task.

Mandarin and Taiwanese verbal are not too different, its more of the fact that Taiwanese written is always traditional whereas in Mainland China its more simplified but can also be in traditional. Cantonese and Chaozhou are definitely more different in the verbal aspect and really can't be understand by mandarin speakers

I looked through some of the sections within the link and I thought they were decent. How the teacher at the school I'm attending teaches new learners is by this book: http://www.amazon.com/Integrated-Chinese-Simplified-Characters-Textbook/dp/0887276385/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1385766135&sr=8-3&keywords=chinese+textbook it follows many basic phrases for everyday life and general conversation with text readings that incorporate not only the characters in that chapter but also ones from past so you don't forget words. It also has pinyin, word definition in English, and also a index that shows all words in Characters and English translations.There are also multiple levels of the book so when you are ready to can go to the next step You are also going to want one of these: http://www.amazon.com/Merriam-Websters-Chinese-English-Dictionary-Gaelle-Amiot-Cadey/dp/0877798591/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1385765582&sr=8-1&keywords=chinese+english+dictionary To look up words in Chinese yo have to find out the radical for the word and although it may seem like guessing at first you learn that it follows a uniform style and by looking up many words you not only learn the radicals of most words but become increasingly fast at identifying them, and its also good for just being a Chinese-English or English to Chinese dictionary.