AGo to ask a real Chinese teacher, you will get the right answer! come here to have one free lesson: http://www.echineselearning.com

AIf you are a beginner, i would recommend http://www.zapchinese.comThey free lessons with audio and video files, and a list of useful Mandarin chinese phrases. It's a good start

AThe differences between spoken Mandarin in Taiwan and mainland China are comparable to English spoken in the US, UK, Australia, of course there are a few terms used differently, but overall everybody understands each other very easily. The writing though has bigger differences, about 30% are different. Taiwan people still uses the traditional characters while mainlanders write some of them in simplified form. When romanizing, the 2 have different phonetic systems, in Taiwan it's called zhuyin, in China it's called pinyin.

AMany people have already mentioned that Taiwanese pronunciation is different, but I think an even greater difference is word choice. Just like Americans and Brits might call the same thing by different names (like chips vs. french fries), it's the same between Taiwan and China. There's a possibility with certain things that people won't understand you. For example, in China they say "didao" to mean "authentic" and in Taiwan they say "daodi" because they use "didao" to mean "underground walkway".The Mandarin you learn at your university will definitely help you... you'll just have to be open to learning new ways of talking when you get to Taiwan. :)

AOne thing you may need to know firstly - Mandarin Chinese is a way people SPEAK Chinese, not writing it. It's the official / standard language of Mainland China and Taiwan, somehow like 'Queen's English' or 'BBC English' in UK.There're uncountable different dialects in Mainland China. People speak in their own way between family and friends. But Mandarin is used in public, on TV, at schools... In Taiwan, there're local dialects too, such as Minnan, Hakka etc.. But don't worry, standard Mandarin Chinese is exactly what you need to learn. (FYI, Mandarin Chinese is often known as '國語' in Taiwan and '国语' / '普通话' in Mainland.)As you know, there're 2 ways of writing Chinese: Simplified Chinese in Mainland and Traditional Chinese in Taiwan. It doen't affect the pronunciation. Simplified Chinese characters are simplifed from Traditional Chinese, so the latter is more difficult in form. However, since you're going to live in Taiwan, you'd better learn recognising Traditional Chinese characters.Plus, once you know Traditional Chinese, you can recognise its simplifed cousin very easily (but not vice versa)!

AI think you should definitely take a class because you NEED to know the tones as well as the pronunciations perfectly. If you don't have the right tone, the word could be something completely different. You can't really *read* Chinese to learn it anyway.

Athe main purpose of language is to communicate. by learning chinese, you can communicate with more than 1.4 billion people around the world, don't you think it's beneficial?of course not everybody learn chinese because of it's economical value. learning of chinese language is getting more and more popular because of the richness and beauty of chinese culture.it is not so much of a business language. most of the time when we dealt with china companies, we wrote to them in chinese, they replied in english. while foreigners are learning chinese, the china people are learning english too.

Ayou can also try pimsleur or this site...http://www.sayjack.com/

Awhy do you need a special program to show mandarin chinese? you need chinese fonts, that's it. after that, you'll see chinese on the net... and if you install a proper locale and input method for chinese on your system, you'll be able even to write chinese in your preferred wordprocessor.i use GNU/Linux + SCIM, ctrl+space activate the input method and i can write e.g.我爱你hitting wo ai ni (and choosing ideograms properly... note: i dont' know chinese:D)

AI'm actually in the same boat as you, fluent in both English and Mandarin Chinese, and looking to do translation jobs. Luckily, I have a friend who does translating, and she recommended this website to me:http://www.atanet.org/This is the website for the American Translators Association and it has a lot of useful information in terms of jobs, which languages you are interested in translating to/from and also it has a list of universities/colleges and other schools that offer programs for certifications in translating or interpreting. Unfortunately, there is a membership fee for this group, but I found lots of information on the website without having to join. I hope this helps and good luck!