For anyone who watches University Challenge, they often have a contestant by the name of Ng on for the Cambridge / Oxford competition. (I think it’s the OxCam game anyway). For those of you unfamiliar with the game the teams must buzz in to answer a starter question. Whoever buzzes in the announcer says the University name and then the name of the Contestant. I still laugh at the way the announcer can say, in this suave, English accent “Cambridge, Ng”
It’s sorta like the noise you would thrust when thrusting your pelvis, according to University Challenge.
A Tagalog-speaking friend confirms the “nung” pronunciation for Filipinos happening to have this surname. Apparently, this name is treated differently in different areas.
Passably – pronounce Nguyen exactly like “Gwen”.
Perfectly – practice pronouncing “ng” at the beginning of words. It’s actually pretty easy (remember m is to b as n is to d as ng is to g. If you can say “goat”, you can say “ngoat”.
Once that’s down, say “Ngwen” to rhyme with “Gwen”.
Over 20 replies and still no mention of the They Might Be Giants song “Ana Ng”?
(And no smart aleck coming in to tell us that “it’s pronounced Throat-Warbler Mangrove”?)
A friend of mine in Singapore has this surname. I asked him and he said it was pronounced just as it looks, Ng, sort of a very short nuh sound followed by a final hard g.
As one of my many bids for the SDMB prize for Stating The Obvious, it seems from all the replies that there is no consensus as to the pronunciation. This means you are all the more entitled to simply ask the guy how you should pronounce it.
I don’t believe it can be pronounced as Eng or Ing, for a very simple reason. Please realize that this doctor is a Vietnamese(or Chinese whatever…) and his name is also Vietnamese(or Chinese whatever…). It was out of necessity that he had to find ways of writing his name in english. He had a choice and he thus exercised that choice by choosing the best possible combination of letters to form a word that would be closest to the correct pronunciation of his name. The fact that he chose only Ng when he could very well have chosen Eng or Ing, implies that the correct pronunciation cannot be Eng or Ing. It has to be pronounced as what anyone knowing english would naturally pronounce Ng. IMHO a way to pronounce it would be to start saying NO but then as soon as the vocal chords have started producing the first sound of Nnnn…suddenly change your decision and try to end with a g as in go. There…you have it!
When the Vietnamese started coming to Australia in large numbers, the poor buggers had to put up with the Aussies pronouncing Nguyen as Nyoo-an (s in Nyoo-an used cars). Some people still use this pronunciation, and most Vietnamese are resigned to it.
Things have improved these days, and most English speakers here have upgraded the way that say this surname to a simple Win. This is quite acceptable, and most Vietnamese appreciate it (after twenty years of hearing nyoo-an from us).
If you want to go one step further, try saying nwin. Then, to get real close to the proper Vietnamese way, you’ll need to get the Ng thing happening, and also introduce a very short schwa sound immediately after the Ng sound and before the w sound. It’s actually a two-syllable name, but the first is quite sublimated. And of course the ‘w’ isn’t actually a ‘w’ at all (the letter doesn’t exist in Vietnamese); represented by the ‘y’ in Nguyen, this sound is what you get if you try to say ‘w’ without bringing your lips together (it’s a bit like the phantom “almost w” in the French oui).
In other words, compared to Nguyen, Ng is a walk in the park.
Yeah well, you’d think that. But then you have probably never seen Maori spelling of names. The letters are not the best English representation of pronunciation by any stretch. One of my favourits has always been “Whangaparita”, probably best repesented by the speling ‘Fungapreeta’.
The point is tha foreign speakers don’t always adopt the best English pronunciation in their spellings. Often they have developed an alternative spelling system using uncommon letter combinations like ‘wh’ and ‘ng’ to represent sounds that don’t truly exist in English. Because of that it’s impossible to conclude that ‘Eng’ isn’t pronounced ‘Eng’ or ‘Ung’ or ‘Enjee’ or anything else.
Can’t remember where I saw it, in some book I read a few years ago but which one is lost to me.
Anyway, one of the prime characters was called Nguyen Ng, and he pronouced it ‘John Wayne’
Pondered on this many a time over tha past few years, and the above thread has done absolutely nothing towards clearing up the mystery.
I would say, in answer to the OP, ask the receptionist, she will probably mispronounce it anyway, or garble the pronunciation into something she thinks you can handle.
I worked for two different bosses in Hong Kong who both had this surname. The correct Cantonese pronunciation is indeed exactly as it’s written. Say a word that ends in ‘ng’ and remove the rest of the word. It’s a short hum with your mouth open - it’s not that difficult to pronounce. A similar ‘consonant’ sound is used for the beginning of the words that mean, e.g. “I/me” (ngoh) and “love” (ngoi).
(Note, my transliterations there, not official ones.)
What throws people accustomed to Western languages is that in some dialects (viz Cantonese), Chinese allows syllables that consist solely of a consonant sound.
In this case, that consonant is the velar nasal “ng” (International Phonetic Association symbol is “ŋ”). Compare the velar nasal to the familiar bilabial nasal (m) and alveolar nasal (n). Like m and n, ng can be pronounced in an extended manner – one can hum “mmmmm”, “nnnnnn”. Likewise, one can also hum ng – “ŋŋŋŋŋŋŋŋŋ”.
By contrast, consonants like t and k cannot be extended. Their pronunciation has a temporary and punctuated saliency.
What does this all mean? In short, a few languages allow extendable consonants to form syllabic nuclei in much the same way as (naturally extendable) vowels do. So the name Ng can be regarded in the same way as names like Oh (Japanese) and U (Burmese) – it is a single-sound syllable.
Other extendable sounds are used to form syllabic nuclei. Not too unfamiliar are the use or “r” and “l” as syllabic nuclei in Slavic languages – Czech Plzen, Serbo-Croatian hrvatski.
Also, IIRC, in some dialects of Chinese, the number “two” (Mandarin “two” spelled er[sup]4[/sup] in Pinyin) is pronounced much like “zzzzzzzzzh”, except the tongue tip is raised near the roof of the mouth.
Finally, in some American Indian languages, such Bella Coola, words like sps (pronounced more or less “ssspsss”) exist.
How do people shout these names? It seems like a word lacking vowels can’t really be projected. I just tried shouting ‘ng’ and the loudest sound I could make can hardly be heard from the next room. It’s like humming really loudly.
Do people add extra fake vowels when shouting these names to give them projection?
