some of us grew up with chinese friends in school, might have visited their houses and heard chinese but never understood them. some of you might be even filipino-chinese here. my question is, is mandarin advanced? do you have words for everything? how about mathematics? what is the best way to learn mandarin? i understand purong tagalog and latin alphabet. i went to a chinese school shortly. i know xie xie and ni hao ma. did some calligraphy. but kind of gusto ko matuto eventually. what its like in the long run? salamat/xie xie.