If you don't know, Chinese characters are far too numerous to put on a keyboard (estimates range from fifty- to eighty-thousand symbols), and because of their lack of similarity to most other languages, they would be practically impossible to learn to any useful degree, by any method of learning. For these reasons, a second system was created, to bridge the gap and help foreigners to learn Mandarin. It's also used by Chinese people to input their language on computers.

The system is called Pinyin, and it uses tone markings to show you how to pronounce each syllable. Pinyin is surprisingly intuitive and simple, once you know what you're looking at.

For example, the word for thank you (谢谢) is written in Pinyin as xièxie. The accent mark goes down on the first syllable, so the tone of your voice goes down. No tone marking on the second syllable means it's pronounced neutrally. While the letters of Pinyin don't always sound the way you'd expect (here, the x is more like sy), that part's easy enough to learn.

You already know how to say thank you in Chinese. :)
Fun, right?

I have to say, since I started learning this one, I've become really excited about it and that's made it really easy to remember new words. I study online for a few hours a week, as the mood strikes, and I'm already able to use it in a very basic way. The test of this will come next time I'm in a Chinese restaurant, and I attempt to compliment the chef; If I get kicked out of the restaurant, that signifies that my pronunciation needs more work.

As this is my current language focus, I'm not doing much with other languages, at this point, but as I get more comfortable with it, I will be continuing my so-far limited learning of the next one on my list, and you'll be hearing all about that, as soon as it happens.

That's progress on my mission.
With 1.3 billion speakers, foreign language #3 is Mandarin.