Quote Originally Posted by jape View Post
straight of the top of my head, ching kwee - tsong shen - jzing way - sjee aling
Each of these links has a "listen" button where you can hear the words pronounced in standard Mandarin.

Qingqi = cheeng chee. the Q is called a sibilant and to do it right the tip of your tongue is behind your bottom front teeth so it's highly aspirated. It's aways followed by a high vowel.

Zongshen = dzung shunn. the Z is is not unlike the Z sound in english but it has a hard start -- an affricate as opposed to a fricative.

Xingyue = Hseeng yooeh. Like the Q, the X is sibilant, tip of tongue behind lower front teeth.

Jialing = jyah ling. Truth be told, J is also a sibilant.

Pinyin is not hard to learn, but there are several letter and combinations that are conventions for sounds that do not exist in English/western languages. So you have to learn them, rather than just speak them as if they were English.

The beauty of Q and X are that they have no innate sound in English, so they can be conveniently assigned to sounds in Chinese that don't exist in English/Western language. The danger is that folks see Q and X and relate them to western/English words in which they appear, like queen or xylophone. Unfortunately, those both fail!

Class dismissed.