Chinese languages

I just found ou that my grandfather is chinese and my grandmother is Puerto Rican. Want to leanr mandarin now.I have a few friends im school that speak it, but i'd like to learn mandarin through here too.I live in Rochester, New.I just moved here from the Bronx.

The Chinese language has been written with Hanzi for four thousand years, who are you to say that everyone should be experts at Pinyin. Besides, how often do people actually get to read this much Pinyin all together? When you go to a bookstore do you see books printed with Hanzi or Pinyin? Have some...

people seem to attempt to communicate in pinyin without tones - which provides even less information that what can be heard from a speaker (and, without having the interactive advantage of face-to-face conversation).