I think pinyin is very useful for you to study Mandarin. Pinyin can improve your pronounce and you can use pinyin to typewrite the Mandarin or Cantonese in your PC, you can msn with Chinese easy. pinyin is good for you. I think more practice is very important for study language. Cantonese and Mandarin, I think you can see chinese movie and soap opera , chinese news or talk show .

Of course you don't need to use pinyin. Pinyin is the best to use on Mandarin.If you want to improve your Cantonese, I think you need to practice more. Wish you can speak very fluent Cantonese! GOOD LUCK!^^

I'm learning chinese too... I think for us - a non chinese speaker, basically need this kind of thing otherwise we might get lost and ended up learning nothing. Unless for instance we were born in China and grew up learning chinese, it would be easier for us to learn the "characters" at the very least presence of pinyin. for now, pinyin serves as a helpful bridge in learning their somewhat mind-boggling way of writing... I love it! :)

Pinyin is the basic you need to learn if you want to learn mandarin.Pinyin plays the basic roll as samilar as phonetic symbol in English.