This takes some effort and creativity, maybe a dash of poetry, and is by no means an automatic process. US Ambassador to China James Sasser has the natural-sounding Chinese name Shang4 Mu4jie2 . A long time ago, Japan borrowed Chinese characters, and they're still extensively used in Japanese writing. However, the pronunciations are often completely different. But spoken Chinese is easier to learn than you might think.
Chinese grammar is very simple.
Well, Chinese speakers complain that way about English. Make sure you start off by practising pronunciation, because a bad pronunciation is hard to correct later. If have RealAudio , you can click here to hear Beijing . Don't ask me why. No, unfortunately, not as far as I know.