Originally Posted by Rock Chuck
Originally Posted by nyrifleman
Originally Posted by Jcubed
Originally Posted by navlav8r
Can’t help on resources but making an effort to learn even a few words and sentences is usually appreciated by the native speaker.

This. Or do you need to speak some degree of fluency? I have found Asian languages are, many times, hard for the purely Western speaker. Tones/intonation being the most difficult.

Ymmv

I disagree. I personally found Japanese to be easier than Spanish.
I have a friend who spent 20 years in Taiwan. Of course he's fluent in Mandarin Taiwanese which is very similar to Mandarin Chinese. He said it's a lot easier to learn than many think.

I watched a pile of super smart people fail out of Chinese at a rapid clip.

Me