Wait, before you close this.

Straight up: Chinese won't remind you of anything you've ever studied. No words you recognize, no family resemblance to bail you out. That's why most people quit in week one — and almost never because of the characters, which are the whole reason they showed up.

What actually stops people is the tones. There are four. That's the entire thing everyone's afraid of. And you already use tone every day — "really?" goes up, "really." goes down. Chinese Illustrated defuses them from day 1: every map shows the character with its building blocks, the pinyin with its tone marked, and a native voice, so the word lands with the right sound the first time. What you learn crooked doesn't get fixed later.

Then the part nobody mentions: Chinese verbs never change. 我是, 你是, 他是 — the same 是. No conjugation, no tenses, no plurals, no gender. I don't want price to be the reason you never even give it a shot.