Just throwing in some more opinion.

American speakers are fu*ked. English is not far behind because there is no consistency in the language as pointed out.

My kids are in a Bi-lingual immersion school and they first learn Zhuyin (also called bopomofo) and is popular in Taiwan. It is a phonetic representation of chinese that uses what looks like character strokes. It's taught to the kids because it doesn't confuse english phonetics with chinese phonetics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuyin

At the 2nd grade, they are taught Pinyin. Pinyin is a 1:1 mapping of Zhuyin. I can't find the reference but I heard it was created by a chinese person who studied in Russia. So many of the letters chosen would have a russian bent to it. Some if it, he just had to make up to get a unique equivalent from Zhuyin.

Being American, I hated Pinyin. After understanding it from my kids, I have grown to like it as the best transliteration method. As long as you learn the alphabet (and there is a song for it), you can pronounce all Pinyin fairly accurately (you still need to get the tones). Compare that to "ghoti" which could be prounounced "fish" in english. http://www.englishclub.com/esl-articles/199909.htm

For cantonese, I always hated Yale or Wade. As a Cantonese American, I just can't get into romanization of Cantonese. That said, for the same reason I'm liking Pinyin, I'm starting to like Jyutping: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyutping

With both Pinyin and Jyutping, I consider them foreign languages and read them like they were meant to be. Just like you wouldn't put english phonetics on french words, the same goes for these.