chinese characters' pronunciation is according to pinyin. so you can speak first and remember the letters how to pronounce.(it's close to the english letters ,it's easy. and about the tone, you just take it like a tone to a song) about writing characters, every word is come from the life show. so don't be nervous cause it's so different from your culture. you can read a picture evern a story from each part of it. (at the first of the character learning , you write or to draw like a simple picture.) till you keep them in mind. learn language i frefer to the 'baby way', listen and speake as much as you can at first, and learn the word when you have some knowledge about simple sentence and the usual way peaple how to express their feeling . try to use it as much as you can like your own language. so, if you are not in china, to make some chinese friends who around you would also be good. hope it's help :)

I think you should learn pinyin at first, it is better to have a face-to-face lesson because you can hear clearly and see the mouth shape.There are some pronunciations Portuguese and English not have. After that, you can read some simple sentences with pinyin .If you want to learn Chinese well, you 'd better listen and talk to Chinese more,because there are many sentences that people are used to saying like that without grammar . You know ,Chinese is a completely different language with latin languages, but it is not very difficult if you are interested in it.

More or less ,It is difficult for people to learn foreign languages well.I think pronunciation is the first to learn chinese.It is certainly very hard to study at the beginning.As that I learn English well is hard for me .Specially,my spoken english is poor.At times I want to give and think I can not learn well forever.But I have to go on learning because of marks of the nation into college.You had better exchange more with chinese.On the other hand ,you are winner as long as you never give up.

The way you learnt English when you were a kid.. that is to keep speaking