Chinese is difficult, but it is always difficult to learn languages of other countries. Chinese is interesting,I am a Chinese teacher, if you need some help, you can tell me. Studying is long time, you have to be ready for it.

on the one hand Chinese characters one just one reading, that makes it quite simple compared to Japanese when one (Chinese) character (that is "kanji") can have tens of different reading that depend of context and what are the surrounding characters and sometimes pure magic :P And unlike what Zack said, in Japanese they have also thousands of Chinese characters (kanji) and then on top of that they have hiragana and katakana. so the count becomes instead of "+50" something like "several thousands + 2x46". on the other hand, there are the tones that for me at least would be the most difficult part in Chinese. PS. I said the same thing about another language earlier, that in the end it all depends of your motivation. If you want to learn, learn it! But if you begin with "tell me why I should learn it..." then that's a bit of a red flag. Learning any language can be a lot of work, time and effort. If this motivation does not come from deep inside you, we cannot help you. If you really want to learn it, you can do it!

Yes, I find it extremely hard, but also SUPER interesting. ;) I would recommend you to take private classes with a good teacher, specializing in phonetics, so as they could teach you the tones and the aspirated/non-aspirated consonants. As for the pronunciation, I think this is the most important part: don't EVER ignore Mandarin is a tonal language. It may strike you as difficult at the beginning, but it's worth the effort and I think it won't take too long for you to get used to it. If you want to read/write Chinese, you will have to learn the characters and, in my opinion, that's the most fascinating feature of this language <3 That said, you'll have to practice a lot - when I say "a lot", I mean it! (Chinese people also did when they were children) There are lots of series on the internet, lots of songs on Youtube (most of the time, there are subtitles!) and there are good manuals too! (I like the "New Practical Chinese Reader" for instance and you can find it online). Furthermore, Chinese people are often very excited when you try to speak Mandarin with them, so you should give it a try: find someone on italki and exchange languages with them on Skype :) Good luck, Tally! 加油！

Chinese has difficult aspects, and simple aspects. Reading and writing are very difficult, as Zack suggested. But you can learn to speak and communicate without being able to read or write, particularly with a device that can read printed writing for you! The tones are difficult for a beginner to learn, if you don't have them in your language, but once you have learnt them, are reasonably straight-forward. On the other hand, compared to English, the grammar is ridiculously regular and simple! There are quite a few good resources online, at least from English. As far as jobs goes - that would depend on the situation in your country.

I didn't mean to upset you, but: There's 3000 common basic words in Chinese, almost 8105+ in total. Only 26 alphabets in English. Only 50+ words in Japanese syllabary. So, guess again~