Pinyin

A small table with the Mandarin sounds that most learners of Chinese have difficulties with:

	voiceless fricative	voiceless unaspirated affricate	voiceless aspirated affricate
blade-alveolar	s (s)	z (ts)	c (tsʰ)
retroflex	sh (ʂ)	zh (tʂ)	ch (tʂʰ)
alveolo-palatal	x (ɕ)	j (tɕ)	q (tɕʰ)

(There is also an example where the retroflex ʈ instead of t is used for zh (ʈʂ) and ch (ʈʂʰ).

Another sounds that often creates problems is the retroflex r, which is [[IPA: �?|�?]] in IPA