Arrange to be reincarnated in China in your next life - that is infinitely easier than trying to learn Mandarin outside of China and total immersion, I speak from experience. I cannot recomend trying to self-educate yourself. Even the usually impeccable Rosetta Stone courses did not help me (but then - I am Irish and not American so maybe....nah!) Find a native speaker with infinite patience and resign yourself to a few years of hard work, and I wish you well - it's no easy task you are contemplating but it is ultimately very rewarding on many levels,,,

There is no easy way..you really need to have a native speaker of the language constantly and repeatedly teach you the correct grammar and pronounciation of the language. Granted the basic grammatical concepts are simple but in order to speak mandarin with any level of competency you have to be able to master four character expressions -which are often idiomatic and hard to understand. Also the pronounciation of mandarin is not always the same as in english..Pinyin gives the best approximation that it can but it is not 100% accurate. I have been learning for years and i am still struggling in many areas. I find writing characters very difficult although I can read a fair number of them. In order to really understand the language you have to master the characters as well. for starters you can go to www.chinesepod.com

P.S. There is no easy way. One big reason why Americans are such poor linguists is that they think you ought to be able to make a game out of it. Well, you can't make a game out of laying bricks or hoeing potatoes; why should you think you can make a game out of something like Chinese? It will require a couple hours of drudgery from you every day for many years. Get used to it.

First, take at least two semesters of Latin so you learn something about grammar and can ask all the "stupid" questions in advance of studying Chinese. (It might also be a good idea to get a seventh-grade English book and review THAT.) And forget about trying to teach yourself. I learned six other languages sitting in a classroom before I was ready to teach myself Russian, and Russian is a piece of cake next to Chinese. Once you are ready to start it, clear the decks so you can spend as much time as possible with it each day. The best way to learn any language is to have to use it before there is time to forget it, which is why when I have to teach a language I do it three or four classes a day five days a week rather than three or four classes a week.

Try the "Ni Hao" series of CHinese books. It won't take too long to learn Chinese, Chinese grammar is as easy as it can get, way easier than English. You just need to pronounce and write the words right. With writing, most words resemble what they look like. For example, ren (person) is written so that it looks like a body and two lines for the the legs.

i think the best way is go to a Chinese university in Beijing, like beijing language university. There is not easiest way to learn a language. or you can find a friend who speak Mandarin. you know we say fight in street for one year is better than you learn Kongfu for three years,that means you have to practice with someone who speaks mandarin. i don't know if i express my idea clearly. hope i can help you.

Go to China. Because when you get there, you will have no choice but to speak Mandarin (:

if you have time and interested, they can go take a look at the http://im.qq.com/qq/2009/beta/, this is QQ software, it is similar to the United States of MSN , as long as you can download and install it with others online chat. We Chinese people generally use it. After you register it will give you a random number.

Rosetta Stone and a ticket to China.

If you have no time to be a full time Mandarin student on a Chinese University for at least 1 year I would suggest the following (based on my own experience): 1) Start for maximum 1 year with a Chinese teacher to master pinyin, pronunciation and tones. Make sure your lessons are not filled with writing an memorizing characters, it's useless in the first year. 2) To be able to produce a sentence I can suggest the American Pimsleur course. In total 100 lessons on DVD that drill many standard sentences and daily expressions into your poor brains. Guarantee to start communicating after you finish the complete course. 3) Where Pimsleur stops at a certain level, I can recommend ChinesePod.com. This is the only web based learning method that is continuing to improve and extend. It offers an almost unlimited number of podcast lessons on different levels (from Newbie to Advanced). Additional tools like lesson transcripts in PDF, lessons excercises and expansion sections make it an easy and very pleasant way to study Mandarin. Moving from one level to the next level you will find out that you continue to improve. Whatever way you study, daily dedication is the most important: don't give up and don't find an excuse to do nothing today.....

By moving to China lol That's the quickest way. Getting yourself a teacher there would also be good.

Rosetta Stone. I have seen how fast it works and it is amazing.