Notes

The best way to learn Chinese language
The best way to learn Chinese is to set aside time each day to study and practice. Try to do at least 30 minutes-1 hour of intense studying per day. Go for short, intense study sessions where you practice specific nouns, verbs, and phrases, rather than longer sessions as you may not retain information as well.
Set short-term and long-term goals as part of your study plan. Make short-term goals like learning basic conversational terms within the first 1-2 weeks of your studies. Create long-term goals like being able to have a complete conversation in Chinese with a native speaker by 6 months into your studies.

Learn the sounds Mandarin uses.
The popular phonetic system, pinyin (characters: 拼音), is very helpful. Learning pinyin can be tricky, but most letters you will encounter sound very similar to their English counterpart. The new sounds you'll have to learn include: "h", "x", "q", "j", "r", and "ü". There are also other letter combinations you need to learn, including "zh", "ch", and "sh".
"h": Almost like English "h", but a little bit throatier.
"x": Place the tip of your tongue near where your bottom teeth meet their gums and the middle of your tongue near the roof of your mouth. Then, blow air out of your mouth. It will sound similar to "sh", but closer to "s".
"q": Just like "x" but use a "t" sound to start it. It will sound similar to "ch", but closer to "ts".
"j": Similar to "q", but you'll need to use voice in this one. Instead of just breathing air out, do it with sound behind it. The difference between "q" and "j" is like the difference between "s" and "z" in English.
"r": This letter makes a different sound when it's at the beginning of a syllable versus when it's at the end. When it is at the start, it's a tricky one and may need more practice. Take the tip of your tongue and lift it up until it almost touches the roof of your mouth. The sides of your tongue should touch around your back molars on either side. Then, breathe with your voice. It should almost sound like the "s" in "vision", but closer to "r". When this letter is at the end of a syllable, it sounds just like an "r" in English.
"ü": This letter is the sixth vowel of Chinese, and is not one found in English. However, it is relatively easy to say. First, round your lips as if you were about to say "oo", as in "food". Then, make the sound of "ee" that you hear in "bee".
"zh": Very similar to English "j" in "jar", but position your mouth the same way as for Mandarin "r".
"ch": Very similar to English "ch" in "chew", but position your mouth the same way as for Mandarin "r".
" sh": Very similar to English "sh", but position your mouth the same way as for Mandarin "r". The sounds "r", "zh", "ch", and "sh" are known as the "retroflex" initials because they are a sound family of a sort.

Learn how to count. Luckily, the Mandarin numerical system is fairly straightforward and logical, and once you have learned the first ten numbers you will be able to count to 99.
Below you will find the numbers one to ten, written in simplified Chinese characters, followed by the Hanyu pinyin translation and the correct pronunciation. Make sure to practice saying each number using the correct tone.
One: written as (一) or yī, pronounced [eee]
Two: written as (二) or èr, pronounced [err]
Three: written as (三) or sān, pronounced [saan]
Four: written as (四) or sì, pronounced [ssuh]
Five: written as (五) or wǔ, pronounced [oo]
Six: written as (六) or liù, pronounced [lee-yoe]
Seven: written as (七) or qī, pronounced [chi]
Eight: written as (八) or bā, pronounced [baa]
Nine: written as (九) or jiǔ, pronounced [jee-yoe]
Ten: written as (十) or shí, pronounced [sh]
Once you have mastered numbers one to ten, you can continue counting in double digits by saying the number in the tens' position, then the word 十, followed by the number in the one's position. For example:
The number 48 is written as sì shí bā (四十八), literally meaning "four tens plus eight". The number 30 is written as sān shí (三十), literally meaning "three tens". The number 19 is written as yī shí jiǔ (一十九), literally meaning "one ten plus nine" (however in most Mandarin dialects the initial yī is omitted from numbers in the teens, as it is deemed unnecessary).
The word for hundred in Mandarin is (百) or baǐ, so 100 is written as yì baǐ, 200 is written as èr baǐ, 300 is written as sān baǐ, etc.

Study basic grammar. There is a common misconception that grammar does not exist in the Chinese language, but this is not true. Chinese grammar rules do exist, they are just very different from those in Indo-European or other language systems. Unlike these languages, Chinese is a very analytic language which is both good news and bad news for language learners.[5]
For instance, in Chinese, there are no complicated rules about conjugations, agreement, gender, plural nouns or tense. Most words consist of single syllables which are then combined to make compound words. This makes sentence construction fairly straightforward.
However, Chinese has its own set of grammar rules which do not have an equivalent in English, or other Indo-European languages. For example, Chinese uses grammatical features such as classifiers, topic-prominence and preference for aspect. As chinese bridge competition are not used in English, they can be quite difficult for learners to grasp.
However, despite the differences, Chinese does use the same word order as English mostly, i.e. subject - verb - object, making it easier to translate word for word. For example, the English phrase "he likes cats" is translated directly as "tā (he) xǐ huan (likes) māo (cats).
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