Tone is not that important. Each dialect of Mandarin has its own set of tones, but they can understand each other most of the time. Most non-natives don't follow tones altogether.
For the Chinese, getting the tones right usually means you are not a country bumpkin, which can sometimes affect your job prospect, but if you are a foreigner they don't care.
Chinese has fairly minimalistic and consistent grammar. If you don't take the tones too seriously, it should be one of the easier spoken languages to learn.
>wouldn't you rather become literate by learning 26-30 symbols than by learning thousands of symbols?
Native speakers only memorize a few of the simple radicals, most of the rest come to you through osmosis. After learning some characters you begin to see the pattern. Each radical has a specific placement in a character, so you can usually "spell out" a character by listing the radicals.
One important difference between English and Chinese is that English is something everyone expects you to know. Knowing Chinese on the other hand will get you mad street cred if you are a non-native.
For the Chinese, getting the tones right usually means you are not a country bumpkin, which can sometimes affect your job prospect, but if you are a foreigner they don't care.
Chinese has fairly minimalistic and consistent grammar. If you don't take the tones too seriously, it should be one of the easier spoken languages to learn.
>wouldn't you rather become literate by learning 26-30 symbols than by learning thousands of symbols?
It's 214 radicals, here's the list:
http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/radicals.php
Native speakers only memorize a few of the simple radicals, most of the rest come to you through osmosis. After learning some characters you begin to see the pattern. Each radical has a specific placement in a character, so you can usually "spell out" a character by listing the radicals.
One important difference between English and Chinese is that English is something everyone expects you to know. Knowing Chinese on the other hand will get you mad street cred if you are a non-native.