Comment by 0_o

I am from China, my advise for western Chinese learners is:don't learn it based on Pinyin which seems helpful at the beginning but leads you to nowhere at all. If you just want to be able to read CHinese books or novels you simply don't have to know how to speak it. Most of the European Chinese experts in the last century were like that. And if you just want to speak it fluently, find a Chinese gf/bf,in two years you can flirt with others in Chinese.