If you know how to pronounce Beijing, Shanghai and fengshui then you can figure almost half of it out straight away. Bei, hei, lei, mei, pei, jing, ling, bing, shang, hang, bang, rang, feng, meng, peng, deng, shui, hui, rui.
Um....not really. Mandarin Chinese has 422 morphological combinations, exclusive of tone. Still, learning pinyin is dead easy. Even the slowest students should be able to master the system in a matter of days.
I’ve never taken a class to learn Chinese. For me, that seems slow and pointless. Some people think it’s absolutely essential for them, however. Courses for horses.
C_Z may well be one of those rare, gifted, intuitive language learners that absorbs language mostly by osmosis. At least, I hope he is...rather than the much more common duffers ones overhears in Beijing, boasting of their language prowess while bleating some toneless something only vaguely recognizable as Chinese by very sympathetic listeners. 99% of learners, however, will benefit from a class, especially at the beginning. The methods C_Z mentions are fine supplements, but for most learners they're a poor substitute for someone drilling you and ruthlessly, repeatedly correcting your pronunciation and word-order lapses. Once you have a solid grounding, it's much easier to continue studying on your own.
"thank you" (che che nee")
Lesson 1 in hanzi (= Chinese characters) and pinyin: 谢谢你 , xie xie ni.
