As a westerner with extremely limited exposure to asian languages, I'm not sure if I would do any better. I found a website where I can listen to (I hope) a native speaker say "seven" in Chinese. The way I would say it would be similar to the English word "tea."
I thought I heard a "ch" sound, but I have difficulty distinguishing it. Anyway, this supports my point that people who aren't accustomed to a family of languages will take more than a few hours to get pronunciation of even a single word correct.
