Seconded, but I would add that learning to write Chinese by hand is a HUGE waste of time and should be avoided. If you can choose the right character in your IM

Seconded, but I would add that learning to write Chinese by hand is a HUGE waste of time and should be avoided. If you can choose the right character in your IME, that's good enough. I would also add two reasons why Chinese is a much better language to learn than Japanese, because I really regret learning them in the wrong order. 1. Japanese makes a lot more sense when you can read Chinese. 2. Chinese is more inventive when it comes to new words, whereas Japanese seems to default to importing the English term. Random example, the @ character is called 小老鼠 (little mouse) in Chinese, but "ato maako" (at mark) in Japanese.