You are wellcome. It seems that you have two questions. Here's the answer. 1. I'm not sure if there is a pinyin book for people who would like to study Chinese as a second language. Although there are definitely many pinyin books for Chinese kids, I don't know if they work good with adult learning. So you'd better find a TCSL(Teaching Chinese as a Second Language) teacher to ask for some advice. 2. Traditional Chinese characters is the only using language which retain characteristics of hieroglyph. The characters are beautiful and meaningful. Simplified Chinese characters, however, has lost the all of that. If I were a kid again, I will never choose Simplified. I think it's very regrettable for our mainland Chinese people, because we lost our culture and tradition.

This question is very difficult even for many native Chinese speaker. It'll need a long answer to explain the difference of these two words. Here's some tips. "hu ran" and "tu ran" can both be used in unforeseen circumstances. But their parts of speech are different. "hu ran" is an adverb and can only functions as adverbial modifier in Chinese sentences. "tu ruan" is an adjective and can functions as predicate, complement, attribute, adverbial modifier in Chinese sentences. That is to say, they have the same meaning when they function as adverbial modifier. For example, 美国突然中断了对阿富汗的援助。 美国忽然中断了对阿富汗的援助。 And they also have many differences. For instance, We say 这件事很突然。 but we don't say 这件事很忽然。 We say 事情发生了突然的变化。 but we don't say 事情发生了忽然的变化。 I don't know if you could read Chinese characters, if the explainations are difficult for you to understand, just remeber you can use "tu ran" under all circumstances, but "hu ran" is not. And "hu ran" can be replaced by "tu ran".

Well, you know, when we were kids, we studied Pinyin and traditional Chinese characters together in elementary school. I think pinyin is easier to learn than traditional Chinese characters for people who study Chinese as a second language. So my suggestion is that you could start from pinyin learning first and practice more with Chinese people.

"特长" refers to some special skills such as singing,dancing, playing musical instrument, and even doing magic is a "特长" too. But you are not a professional, you don't make living by these special skills. "专长" refers to those skills that qualify you as a specialist. Maybe you have to make living by these special skills, such as financial accounting, software programming, etc. But this is just the normal difference between these two words, sometims they have the same meaning. That is to say, you can use both of them to express the same idea.

In my view, Pinyin is a very good tool for people who study Chinese as a second language. It'll help you communicate with Chinese people easily. My suggestion is that you can begin with the basic, and then study Traditional Chinese characters. We Chinese study Pinyin when we were in elementary school.

Your question is not very clear. Do you want to translate "挡土砂" into English? In Chinese, "挡土砂的窗'="纱窗", so I think maybe the answer you need is "screen window".

中国政府今天宣布，作为8500亿元医疗体系改革的一部分，中国将在未来3年在70万个乡村建立或维护至少一个诊所。在中国，疾病是导致贫困的重要原因之一。医疗费用过高已经引发患者针对医护人员的抗议和暴力事件。为了解决这些问题，卫生部计划在已有的50万城镇医疗工作者的基础上，再培训140万医生、护士和其他医护从业人员到乡村诊所去工作。

I think your descriptions is right. This Chinese slang "小澬" comes from an English word "bourgeoisie". It refers to people who pay much attention on the pursuit of materialistic goals and entertainment. "小澬" are usually white collars, but their income does not reach the middle-class level.