A great place to start
I feel very lucky to have stumbled across Mandarin Blueprint right at the beginning of my journey into this language - I've just read my first set of sentences in Mandarin without pinyin after 4 weeks of studying for an hour-or-two a day. The Mandarin Blueprint policy of letting you take the initial part of the course before subscribing is quite inspiring (far more generous that other courses I've seen that give you a free week or so) - this avoids the 'start of the year gym membership trap' of paying a lot of money and then not using it. I do speak a few European languages - but Mandarin is a whole different ballgame. The free part of the course is really letting me understand the possibilities and also the steady commitment that will be required to get to a 'reasonable' level in Mandarin. So - thank you Phil, Luke and the team for creating this course! (I have to say that the support with this course - even the free part - is fantastic).