[powerapple]

'X' in Xi is not 'sh', and 'Q' in Qing is not 'ch'. Those sounds do not exist in English, hence English speaker cannot hear or pronounce it correctly. Similarly, it is very hard to Chinese speaker to distinguish some English phonemes.

[chao-]

>'X' in Xi is not 'sh', and 'Q' in Qing is not 'ch'.

That is basically what I was trying to relay: That the choices of letters were picked to represent something "different but close enough", borrowed from alternative Anglicizations that were close at hand.

>Those sounds do not exist in English, hence English speaker cannot hear or pronounce it correctly.

I never had a problem differentiating between the 'q' and 'ch' sounds in Mandarin, and I do not think I am uniquely gifted. Listening to a native speaker pronounce Chongqing for the first time made it immediately obvious. I remember struggling a bit with pronouncing 'zh-' but not because I couldn't hear a difference, it just took a little time. And even despite taking a while to learn the pronunciation, I never struggled in hearing the difference between zhuan and juan.

One doesn't hear letters (or characters for that matter), instead one hears articulations, diphthong, glottal-stops and so forth. I guess you could try to mediate what you hear through an unrelated written language, but that seems like counter-productive extra effort.

[gok]

Pingin "X" is the voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant fricative (ɕ in IPA). It's basically just "sh" with your lips spread wider.

[thaumasiotes]

More accurately, it is the English "sh" if you pronounced it with the middle of your tongue rather than the tip.