The answer is "yes", but it's a little more subtle than that. Chinese is normally written with characters, but the characters are pronounced differently in the various dialects. Various systems have been created to represent the pronunciation of characters in several dialects. Today, Hanyu Pinyin is the most widely used system to indicate Mandarin Chinese pronunciation using the Latin alphabet. Unfortunately, some information is lost when only pinyin is used instead of characters: Chinese has many homophones, words that sounds the same but are written differently. For example, 楊 (poplar tree), 洋 (ocean), and 羊 (sheep) are all pronounced "yang" (with 2nd tone). Most of the time, sentences written with only pinyin is understandable, but occasionally, there will be ambiguity when we aren't sure which character is actually meant. This problem is most acute in personal names. If you met someone named "Wang Li", there many possible names with this pinyin pronunciation.

拼音是汉语的拼读规则，类似于英文的音标 phonetic symbol
mandarin 是“普通话” 指的是标准官方用语，没有方言dialect的干扰
i don't know what you mean by "chinese characters"
英文为母语的人学中文只要克服了发音障碍和语法就简单了
祝你成功 Good luck.
answered by "szypedia@126.com, a geek boy in China"

Mandarin is Mandarin and Pinyin is Pinyin. Pinyin is the way how you pronounce the mandarin Chinese characters. Pinyin can be the first step for you to learn Chinese. For instance, instead of reading 您好 which is difficult for a beginner learner, you can read Nínhǎo which is much easier.
Like English, the same Chinese pinyin may have different Chinese characters. For example: 忘 and 望 has the same pinyin “wànɡ,” but the characters are different. “忘” means “forget” while “望” means “look.”
Also the same character has difference pinyin. For example: character “便” has pinyin “biàn” and “pián.” Like “方便(fānɡ biàn)” “便宜(pián yi).”
So you can’t say pinyin and Chinese characters mean the same. But they are indeed two ways to learn Chinese. If you find Chinese characters are hard to understand, you can learn Chinese pinyin first. Then you will find it is not so hard to learn Chinese..
If you still have any question related to how to learn Chinese, please feel free to email me at jennifer.zhu@echineselearning.com. I will be quite glad to tell you how to learn Chinese.

Pinyin is only the pronunciation of the Chinese characters. So pinyin and Chinese characters mean the same. They are only different ways to show Chinese language. When you learn Chinese, you can begin with Chinese pinyin..

I'd like to clarify something about Hanyu Pinyin. It is only one of several pronunciation systems. There is a non-Latin system called Zhuyin Fuhao (注音符號) that is still used in Taiwan to teach pronunciation to children and to indicate pronunciation in dictionaries and newspapers. In addition to Hanyu Pinyin, there are several Romanization systems for Mandarin Chinese (and other dialects, too). Wade-Giles (韋氏拼音) was invented in the 1800s, and was the only system of transcription in the English-speaking world for most of the 20th century, used in several standard reference books and in all books about Chinese published before 1979. Parts of it are still used in the names of individuals and certain cities in Taiwan (for example, 台北 is widely known in English as "Taipei", but in pinyin, it is "Taibei"). Also, Gwoyeu Romatzyh (國語羅馬字) was invented in 1926, and was replaced by Hanyu Pinyin in Mainland China in 1958, and was replaced by Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II (國語注音符號第二式) in Taiwan in 1986.

Today, Hanyu Pinyin is the most widely used system to indicate Mandarin Chinese pronunciation using the Latin alphabet. In Mainland China, it is the only pronunciation system as well as the only Romanization system. In Taiwan, Hanyu Pinyin became the official Romanization system in 2009, but Zhuyin Fuhao is still the official phonetic system.

In America, there many people from Taiwan, so Zhuyin Fuhao is still seen in published materials, especially in textbooks for heritage children. Many surnames are still written in Wade-Giles. For example the Hanyu Pinyin "translation" of some Wade-Giles names are: Hsu = Xu, Hsieh = Xie, Chiang = Jiang, etc.

Please email me at pmchang51@yahoo.com for more information.