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The two things that really kill Chinese (any flavor) as a worldwide second language are the tones and the writing. One of the various Romanized writing systems can handle the latter, but tonal languages are a stone b*tch for anyone who didn't grow up speaking them. Which is too bad, really, because from what little I understand about the structure of Chinese, it's pretty neat. And I think that, as an isolating language (Chinese: the un-German!), it would be easy to learn -- except, of course, for those tones.
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