被中文“逼疯”，外国人眼里的汉字竟然是这样的……

You want to be fluent in Chinese? You are going to memorize about 44,000 subtly different drawings of sheds.

The relationship between the spoken and written Chinese language is rather complex. Its written form has no clues as to how it is actually pronounced.

The tone system also is a pain because there are many homophones in Chinese only distinguishable by the four tones. Even this is often not enough unless the actual context and exact phrase are identified.