I spoke with a vietnamese fellow with whom I work. He speaks several languages. Based on what he said I cannot refute any of the above statements, but he had this interesting contribution.
Apparently, a significant portion of orientals associate their names with the characters that make up their names and not the pronounciation. This may account for the wide varieties of pronounciation promulgated in the west. They often don’t care so long as they know you are talking to them (and don’t call them late for dinner ;)).
That explains a lot. Except that the Vietnamese (usually) use an adapted Latin alphabet.
It is however interesting that most Chinese not only take on English names when in Anglo countries but actually like to have them even when they live in China as a sort of status thing.
This I’ve noticed. Being an engineering grad student, I know alot more asians than your average Midwesterner. Every one of the Chinese people I know have adopted an English first name that they seem to prefer over their given name. In contrast, the Vietnamese guy I know is named Kahny(sp?) Nguyen and goes by Kahny.
Not to completely hijack the thread away from SE Asia, but I do have a related question: on the pronunciation of the New Zealand mystery writer, Ngaio Marsh.
She was English-descent but “Ngaio” – her middle name – is Maori. (Her first name was Edith, IIRC.)
Anyway, allowing for Anglicised spellings of Maori names, is it pronounced “NGAY-oh” (as in “way”) or “NGYE-oh” (as in “why”)?
i used to work with a guy named ‘nguyen nguyen’. he pronounced it ‘win win’. i remember clarifying it with him a couple of times to make sure i was saying it right. of course whenever he was involved with something, it was a ‘win win situation’.
It’s not just with English speakers. In Nepal, I often become “Krishna” (yes, I phrased it that way on purpose), because they have trouble with “Christine”. In Germany, I am inevitably “Christina”. Neither bothers me a bit.
I used to know a guy whose last name was “Ng”. He pronounced it…“Enn Gee”
Threw me for a loop the first time I heard him introduce himself. I was expecting it to be pronounced “n’Wey” or something similar, since I’d already heard several versions of the way “Nguyen” can be pronounced.
There’s really nothing to pronouncing the NG at the beginning of a word. The NG sound is just another nasal
consonant, like M and N. Though we don’t have that sound
at the beginning of words in English, it’s easy if you just
think of it as ‘N’, except with your tongue farther back touching the back of your hard palate.
Some languanges have velar nasals (soft palate), and even
uvular nasal consonants.
Hey I work with a Tri Nguyen too. Maybe, it’s the same guy. Was yours Vietnamese?
Anyway, our Tri pronounces his first name like the the English prefix for three. It really should be pronounced like “tree” with a rising voice, but so many people mispronounce it, he just goes along with them. In a similar way, your Tri’s version of his last name shouldn’t necessarily be taken as his true opinion of how it should be pronounced.
Believe it or not, Nguyen as a first name is different from Nguyen as a last name. The first name has a level tonality, while the last name has low rising or high “squeaking” tonality, depending on the accent. This may seem a fine distinction, but to Vietnamese, tonality is at least as important to distinguishing words as spelling is.
Since none of you are going to the last thread of only a few days ago where we had this exact same discussion, I’ll just paste here what I said over there:
The tilde tonal mark is called dâú ngã and let’s not get into how that is pronounced. Here’s how the name should be written, in case you want to impress your Vietnamese friends:
~
Nguyên
Except the ngã should have less helium in it when you write it
Kaps asked:
From many many native speakers who are owners of that name, whould be my answer. Many Vietnamese will tell us to pronounce their names in a variety of ways simply because they would rather not go into the whole tonal explanation and even if they did we would still screw it up and probably turn their name into a curse word. So they tell us just to pronounce it “Win”, which is pretty close.
The only exception I make is those who insist on pronouncing it “Noodgen”. I can’t forgive anybody but the severely dislexic pronouncing it this way.
Only on the Dope could there be 33 responses to a simple question. I love this place.
A guy at work was interviewing some applicants recently, and two men were left in the room, one white and one Asian – according to the applications, one was Johnny and the other was Tau.
He walked over to the Asian man and said, “Hello, I’m Dave, nice to meet you. How do you pronounce your name?”
The Asian man looked at him, puzzled, and answered very slowly, “John-nee.”
It’s spelled “chao”, but otherwise you’re right, assuming you mean “chOW” to represent falling voice and “CHow” to represent rising. Chao can also mean alas, lamp shade, cable, and frying pan in various pronunciations. I’m not sure I enjoy that as thoroughly as you though. Trying to keep tonalities straight drives me … well, mad.
I went to elementary and high school with lots of Vietnamese, a number of whom were Nguyen’s, some first name and some last. The general understanding was that it was pronounced “when.” One guy (first name Nguyen), who I had known for about eight years, was rather amused one day as we were discussing the pronunciation. He’d say it over and over again, with me and several other Americans repeating it, and he’d just laugh. It’s obviously a sound we don’t grow up with.
