si as in 4 and others like shi and zhi etc 4 tc…these schwaa-like sounds don’t really exist in english
the same goes for the e in hen and ren
sh and zh are not really found in English but can easily be produced with a little practice with regards to positioning the tongue.
also c as in cong(聰)and z as in zai(再) are not used in English as first consonants.
My chinese is kind of low intermediate but I’m religious about my pronounciation and I often notice a lot of native english speakers, even at a very high level of Mandarin competency, haven’t grasped these basic phonetic differences.
I’m a phonetics idiot, but I do know that ‘n’ at the ends of words in Mandarin is a tricky one for English speakers.
When English speakers say ‘n’, the tongue, which was touching the roof of the mouth just behind the teeth, falls, producing an almost inaudible ‘uh’ sound. But in Mandarin the tongue stays touching the top of your mouth. No ‘uh’ sound at all should be produced.
Sorry that I don’t know all the technical terms to describe this more precisely. Maybe somebody else can help.
Bu-lai-en, is this the nasal ‘n’ you were talking about?
Actually, I don’t know if that’s really ‘nasal’. I always thought it was. Maybe I’m wrong.
I just really mean that the final ‘n’ and ‘ng’ sounds in Mandarin are different from final ‘n’ and 'ng’s in English. I always assumed that the description for this was ‘nasal’, but I may well me wrong.