When looking at words in pinyin, it is important to remember that the letters of the words do not always correspond with English pronunciations. In some cases, the sounds used in English do not appear in Chinese, so their representative letters have been adopted for other sounds. In other instances, letter combinations like “xi” will yield a unique sound, also not found in English. This can be challenging for people who look at text in pinyin, since it will be incomprehensible if the letters are just sounded out with an English pronunciation.