Pronouncing pinyin

[charlie]

MemChinese is a good tool to learn chinese pinyin,strokes,phrases and pronunciation.You can download it from http://www.memchinese.com.Try it !

[Dr_aggie]

James is perfectly right.

However, Some Beijing natives, especially girls occasionally pronounce 'x' as 's' (platal->dental). It is not considered standard though.

It is OK to confuse sh-s, zh-z, ch-s in China. All most everybody can understand mandarin with some southern accent. But in case that many westerners cannot really differentiate x-sh, q-ch and j-zh. I suggest them not make more confusion.

The 'r' is not the same as that of American English. In mandarin, it is not round, but further back.
However, the 'er' (and ar, ir, ur...in oral language) is quite similar to that of American English. In fact, what I know is only Americans (except for northeasterners) and northern Chinese pronouce that sort of sounds.

[aaran]

I believe the majority of the ethnic-Chinese in Italy are from ZheJiang Province (which is some-what attached to ShangHai but linguistically different just like any other Southern Chinese Province. If you hear them speak Mandarin, there is a good chance that Mandarin is not their native language.

[SilverbeamZ]

Aaran you are right. This has been my experience as well. I live in a heavily populated part of Italy.

[Vasa]

"x" is pronounced like "sh" in English.
"j" is just pronounced like "j"
"q" is pronounced like "ch" in English