I have been teaching Chinese for many years and I find the curiosity of my students very encouraging and at the same time helpful to themselves. Here I have a collection of FAQ that may be useful to you. I certainly hope that you can find them practical and interesting. However, please feel free to contact me if the FAQ does not cover your particular query. Also you can find more resources about Chinese language learning by go to the LINK.  

"Any where, any time." As people often say it. But I would like suggest that you start with something that is part of your passion, rather than a temperary interest. It costs to learn a foreign language, therefore commitment and determination is required. Having said this, I would like to offer some pratical hints. Starting from learning pinyin is a easier than from writing characters, especially for people whose native language is of alphabetical. But you should be aware its shortcomings, which is that you may find it rather difficult to leave pinyin and move into characters later. If you start from learning characters, then you should expect hard time ahead, yet there is a benefit in it, which later you will feel very much at home when it comes to read Chinese. It is very much depends on the reason for learing the language. If it is for oral communication, then I shall suggest that you start from learning pinyin. If you need the language to study Chinese writing materials, then I strongly recommend you start learning Chinese characters first. In terms of textbooks and courses, I shall leave it to your judgment. My personal experience tells me that no textbook or course can replace one's willing to learn.
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Not really. There is no such thing as an alphabet in Chinese as it is in most other languages. There are three kinds of language in the world. Western languages such as English and French are alphabetical. Languages such as Japanese are called syllable language. The third kind is called character language and Chinese language is one of them. Character language are written in symbols not letters.
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Pinyin is a system in which people use to indicate the sound of Chinese characters. Pinyin system was developed in the 50's and 60's last century after the new government took power in the mainland China. It was a part of the government's new language policy to promote official language: Putonghua(meaning common speech). It is rather interesting to remember that the attempt was influenced by then Soviet language policy, at that time the two counrties were "brothers", to romanize the Chinese language. At that time when everything should be renewed, there was a popular view among the intellectuals that the characters represent old and bad system and needed to be totally eliminated.
The system consists 21 consonants(called "shengmu" in Chinese) and 34 vowel and vowel combinations(called "yunmu" in Chinese). Every character can be marked by join "shengmu" and "yunmu" together(some of them only need "yunmu"). That is where the name "pinyin" came from: the term "pinyin" literally means joining sounds.
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Zhuyin is a much older system than the pinyin, although both of them have the same purpose. The zhuyin system was developed in the early last century. The system use certain part of certain Chinese characters to represent consonants and vowels. It is a effective system and has its owm merit. But if you are not familiar with the Chinese characters, it can be quite difficult to memorize. It is kind like learning a new language in order to learn another new language. Compare with the pinyin system, which uses latin letters, the symbols in the zhuyin system are totally foreign to foreign students. It is my guess that scholars who developed the zhuyin system tried to maintain certain aesthetic consistance between the Chinese characters and their sound companions. I believe it was the case for most of the scholars were redhot nationalists. It sounds odd I know, but it happens! The system is still in use today in Taiwan for academic and ideolegical reasons. Pinyin system somehow is associated with the Communist regime. But now the islanders are arguing among themselves if the pinyin system should be adopted, or, for the sake of the most valuable Chinese face, reinvent wheels.
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It is all right to do so. It can help you in memoring the sounds of the characters, even when you become an expert of the Chinese language. But I have to say that under no circumstance should you see pinyin as a language. It will hinder your learning progress in more than one way. The major reason is very obvious that in real life no one actually use pinyin as a written language. Even you are able to speak the language, you still run the risk of being an illiterate after all the time you have devoted and all the effort you have made. That would be a quite funy result don't you think?
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In Mandarin(Putonghua), every character is pronounced in certain tone, and some of them have more than one tone. One character's meaning changes according the tone variation. Here is an example: a character pronounced "shu", the writing is like this. It means, well, depands on the tone. If it is in the third tone, it means "to count, to number something". If it is in the fourth tone, it means "number or digit". There are four tones in Mandarin. There is a fifth tone called light tone. Tones are the most challenging part of the learning prossess and most interesting. It is one of the important benchmarks of Chinese language proficiency. Once master the tones, you shall be able to appreciate the musical quality of the language.
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I shall offer you a scenario that can help you to remember the four tones. Unfortunately that only works for English speakers. However, you can listen to the four tones by click on the following links.

A feeling of sore throat drives you to a doctor who holds a piece of wood onto your mouth and asks you to open it and say "Ah---". (This very long "ah" usually is in the first tone.) Then doctor says:"Um, looks like cancer to me." And of course you are shocked and cry out:"WHAT!" (This uplifting exclamation is in the second tone.) "How can that be?" you ask the doctor who pauses for a few seconds and starts a comprehensive explanation by saying "well". (That very deep, calm and professional "well" is always in the thrid tone.) That is too much for you and you interrupt the doctor:"HEY! it's only score throat." (That "hey!" is in the fourth tone.) There you have it, all four tones in one story. My students and I thought that was quite brilliant. When you have trouble in getting the tones right, stop and retell the story and replace the Chineses characters with those "ah, what, well and hey". You shall be able to make it with ease.
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The bad news is YES! The good news is, well, depending on your personal preference, Chinese character writing can be enjoyable and as some say "therapeutic". If you are serious about learning Chinese, then character writing can not be overlooked. I admit that it is not easy task for anyone but at the same time I have to say that the experience is not only unique but also offers great deal of satisfaction when every little progress is made.
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Yes. The term Mandarin was refered to the rulers of Manchu people who conquered China in 1644. The people soon assimilated into the local Chinese culture and started to speak Beijing dialect which later became the basis of the official language of China: "Pu-tong-hua", meaning common speech. In English, people still refers the speech Mandarin, since the early Westerners who had been to China found that the Mandarins were using that particular speech.
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It is always takes a great deal of some thing to learn a foreign language and to learn it effectively, nothing beats actually living in the country. Unfortunately there are not too many of us have that much time and rescource to do it. Still we can master the language by focusing on what you want out of the language. Some of my students' experiences may be able to give you some hint. Being interested in Chinese Traditional Medicine can give you a pretty good motive to drive through difficulty times. Some of my students love Chinese Kungfu and some are attracted by Chinese cuisine, some art, travel, or culture in general. And there are some offbeats: one of them try to get a Chinese girl as wife and one of them came to learn enough of Chinese just to prove how inferior the culture is and how treacherous the people are. The former later realized his dream with much to regret and the latter found every solid fundation for all his believe and left with great satisfaction, much to my delight.
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You need certain software to perform those tasks. If you are using a Mac, the software you may need is called "Chinese language kit" and you should be able to find the information on Apple's website. For PC users, there is a software called "Chinese Star" and the website is in Chinese. There are quite a few products on the market to convert the window system into Chinese interface and at the same time you can input Chinese characters by using different input methods. The most common one is using pinyin (here we go again!). All you need to do is type pinyin on the keyboard and the computer will list all the homophones on screen for you to choose the ones of your desire. Some application programs can let you type entire sentence in pinyin and the computer can come up with the right set of characters by guessing the context. But the most efficient method is called WUBI (pronounced "woobee"). Wubi builds Chinese characters by type on the keyboard and it is very fast and accurate but requires great deal of practice and you need to memorize each key's function. Nowadays the Chinese have developed a new method to deal with the Chinese computer input task. The method uses a divice called writing pad and you just write on the pad and the computer will recognize the characters you write and the characters will appear on your monitor in the fonts of your choice. This method does not require any additional training apart from the ability of writing Chinese characters, but it is slow and can hardly be used in commercial operation.
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