mwalimu, G: gee
they are actually TAUGHT to pronounce it as ju (as in 句). And, like you said, C as xi (like 西), and N as en 恩, and I guess the same applies to Z in “zoo”: none of these things are particularly difficult for native speakers of Mandarin or Taiwanese. Just taught wrongly by generations of bad teachers.
To get Chinese speakers to pronounce the “z” properly is possible as it is in the Chinese word for Jesus. Now if I get mine to pronounce final consonants I’m happy. Sit dow, brow, gree, are often what you’ll hear rather than sit down brown and green. Pen pan bed bad doll dog and door are often confused.
Thanks ImanIOU!
I didn’t notice the link until just now.
[quote=“ImaniOU”]Here’s a link to Michael Swan’s Learner English book online. You can look for the chapter of common errors made by Chinese speakers starting on page 312 of the document. It gives reasons for the interlanguage mistakes in addition to the common errors in pronunciation, syntax, spelling, grammar, and style with a literal and idiomatic translation of Chinese language.
You can thank me later. 
[/quote]
Yep. Eliminates the need to reinvent the wheel.
In Taiwan, R as in the Chinese-word for meat ‘rou’ (spelled ‘jou’ in Wades-Giles for the ignorant majority who can’t stand Wades-Giles spelling) can be pronounced as Z sometimes due to the linguistic environment under which certain parts of Taiwan grew up. I believe you hear people misprounce any ‘R’ English words with a ‘Z’ sound in the south, correct? I’m guessing you may find people will be able to pronounce words ending with a consonant in some places in Taiwan because other languages spoken besides Mandarin do have consonant endings - Remember, not everybody in Taiwan are the same group of people. Same thing applies to different Chinese groups around the world who mispronounce the so-called standard Mandarin words.
Regarding to those complaining about their standard Mandarin…if some of you studied on the history of Taiwan, I think you will understand the linguistic development of the society. Mandarin pronunciation was not standardized by any government until the 1900’s. Just think: you have Nanking Mandarin vice Pe-king. Just like any society, languages sprang up over time due to separation from other regions and many other factors like politics.
Now a hint for those who teach English and have difficulty in making their students pronounce correctly: practice, practice, practice. It takes time for students to adjust their muscular-involved pronunciation. I’ve seen it in English-speaking people who can’t pronounce Dutch words when they begin learning - I’m not Dutch but I speak some.
It’s not that I can’t stand WG, more that I think it is extremely counter-intuitive; also, not many people use it (except to score political points). Does this make me ignorant, please? Oh well it feels good to be in the majority at least.
No, I haven’t heard this. Perhaps others have.
Again, a lot of the so-called L1 interference patterns are just incorrectly taught pronunciations. The lack of a ㄙㄧ sound in Mandarin appears to explain the consistent mispronunciation of the letter C (as in A,B,C) as 西 xi ㄒㄧ: except that the sound ㄙㄧ does exist in Taiwanese. So how come native Taiwanese speakers can’t manage to say C properly?
Also letter G. This time the sound does exist in Mandarin… and night-market stallholders who sell “G排” know about it. But someone forgot to tell the teachers that it’s not pronounced ㄐㄩ.
The English vowel system and consonant clusters. Long (high) vowels are indeed difficult, but mid vowels are too, especially mid E (bread) mid I (mid). In fact, I don’t think the high vowels are difficult for Chinese speakers to actually pronounce, I just think it’s difficult for them to distinguish between the high and mid vowels.
The back vowel a as in bad is also difficult. Most, but not all, of these difficulties come sounds and phonemic bounderies that don’t exist in Chinese.
It’s the same thing that happens when speakers of language A try to speak the foreign sounds of language B: they substitute approximate sounds from their own language to make up for what they can’t say in the other one. 
Check out the book ‘Clear Speech’ (Pronunciation and Listening Comprehension in North American English) by Judy B. Gilbert. Very good for addressing the problem-sounds mentioned in many of the postings.