The tone system is not hard, although I didn't try to comunicate with a real Chinese. I think I should try to though... there are many of them at markets here. Any good book should teach the meaning of a radicals.

BTW, We may try to find another Smiths in different languages. Take for example Polish "kowal" (and may be western Ukranian and Belorussian too). Hence we have Ковальский, Ковалёв, Ковальчук etc.