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Absolutely.

Pinyin is the primary phonetic transliteration schema (the Yale transliteration doesn't seem to have been used in decades to any significant degree).

But as he stated, he's got a...

A good Tagalog course is exceeding difficult to find. I've never seen a decent one and the best of the dismal is "Tagalog for non-Tagalogs".

As far as the Chinese courses go, there are a number...

Yes, the Teach Yourself series is really bad about not tying the audio more closely with the text. All there books are like that I think. I only buy the book if there are no other options.

It looks as if there's not much traffic here.

Are there any posters here that are proficient in Chinese?

Let me know you levels of proficiency and I'll see if I can increase the Chinese traffic...