How do you pronounce "Ramen"

[jovan]

It’s from Chinese “to pull.” Ramen, or rah-myun, or lamian means “pulled noodles” because you stretch the dough out when you make them.

[Fern_Forest]

@Roadwalker

saimin
everyone call it that in Hawaii, you can get it at resturants

Yup, we do. I wonder why.

[Odinoneeye]

Although I havn’t been in Hawaii for 20 years, I still call it saimin.

My brother has gotten my sister in law to call it that too.

My wife says rahmen

my kids just call it soup.

[Vaeth]

The Japanese ra-men is a somewhat sloppy transliteration of the Chinese lo mein (which is actually pronounced “loh-myen”). The Japanese style ramen isn’t the same as Chinese lo mein, but that’s apparently where the word comes from.

I don’t have a cite for this, alas; I picked it up somewhere while I was living in Tokyo about 17 years ago. Bruce_Daddy’s link up there kind of gestures in the general direction of corroborating my story, though.

Joven got it right above. To the best of my knowledge, in chinese it is:

拉麵 and not 老麵

Living in Osaka, they pronounce it la~ men here. The la~ is slightly longer/stretched.

[KidCharlemagne]

I wonder if the person who brought this up had just watched The Surreal Life. Vanilla Ice pronounced them “roman” noodles and not doubt this paragon of pronunciationship influenced your student.

[Gumbercules]

@Siddhartha Vicious

By the way, I love your Username, Gumbercules.

Thanks. I wasn’t sure if anyone would get the reference.

I guess the consensus is that “rahmen” is correct. All the Corrections Officers in the prisons around here refer to it as “crackhead soup.” Nice.