Mandarin Chinese does not have many syllable-final sounds, but pinyin vowel a can take them all, giving us an and ang.The syllable ang sounds very much like the second half of the English word "song." The an syllable sounds like the second half of the man's name "Don," but not like the woman's name "Dawn." Avoid putting an "aw" sound into the syllable, keeping to a pure "ah" sound.