hi i was interested in learning mandarin, just mainly speaking, i'm not really interested in learning how to write as i hear its very hard. i have alot of friends who speak it, I was wondering what is the best way to go about learning and whether there are any good cd's / websites
2get
Hot tip: Learn English.
You might want to reconcider your decision to not learn writing:
1) Hanzi aren't really that hard, especially traditional. Their pronunciation can be indicated by their parts 兩(liang3) 倆(liang3) 輛(liang4), for instance. Or their meaning might be compositional. 您(nin2) = 你(ni3) + 心(xin1).
2) You may find that learning to write improves your understanding of what you say. Personally, I find it helpful to know what distinctions may have been made in the classical form of the language and survived in the written language or what goes on in the mind of a speaker that you can't necessarily tell from just mimicing their use. Say, perhaps the different uses of de (的,得,地).
3) It's alot harder to go back and learn Hanzi after just having the spoken language than it is to learn them side-by-side. First, if you're going to write, you're going to be using pinyin or some other non-hanzi system that only indicates pronunciation but not meaning. That means that you might not have a distinction between the uses of de as in (2) or may not make a male/female distinction for ta1. When writing, you have to make such distinctions in hanzi. It'd be easier to just make the distinction from the start.
4) Besides that, books and websites aren't going to be written in pinyin, so you can't take your studies further than just learning from conversation.
5) It may sound stupid, but hanzi can actually be very beautiful, interesting and fun if you let it.
i agree. hanzi can be very fun and the characters are very beautiful... unless written by me, that is...
if you learn shufa (calligraphy) you'll find yourself addicted to it and can even stop thinking about eating and sleeping, it can harmonize your emotions and more.
if for a non-native point of view, i really think that learning hanzi will be very hard, i mean very, especially mastering it