IMHO spoken Chinese is not so bad. The grammar is simpler than English (no verb conjugation is a big one), and with the exception of tones, the phonetic invento

IMHO spoken Chinese is not so bad. The grammar is simpler than English (no verb conjugation is a big one), and with the exception of tones, the phonetic inventory is fairly straightforward to learn. Although individual characters are frequently homophonic, treating groups of them as words (as you do in English) reduces the number of homophones significantly. If you're only going to learn Mandarin without the written language, it's very much doable, and possibly even easy depending on how quickly you pick up on the tones. Written Chinese is, of course, a totally different matter.