chī-nēz'

In my view, one of the biggest problems China's going to have putting on a good show to visitors during the Olympics will be Chinese itself. It's not at all a language you can pick up quickly, and visitors often don't realize how few people speak even basic English here. In my experience, Westerners expect China to be a lot more Westernized than it is (or than they should), and the language issue is a pretty good indication of that.

The biggest difference between the two languages is that Chinese is based around the vowel sounds, while English focuses a lot more on the consonants. The Chinese word da, for example, could mean 'big' or 'to hit' (and a couple other things), depending on how you say the 'a'. But Westerners don't really have a concept of that. They only really see one way to say it, short of changing the volume of their voice or saying it as if it had a question mark or exclamation mark at the end of it (which can actually get you close).

Personally, I've been plenty frustrated myself when I get a Chinese address from my friend in pinyin and can't get the taxi driver to understand it because I don't know what tones to use. And I speak some Chinese. Imagine the frustration a white American with no sense of Chinese will have. The whole thing can easily taint a foreigner's experience in China, and that worries me a little, because all that is no fault of the Chinese people themselves, who are often earnestly trying to help you out.