They pronounce it ‘Hundai’. Why the Y?
Actually, they pronounce it even differently. Chee yun dai would be close to it, if you pronounce the “Ch” very softly, and almost combine the first two parts “chee” and “yun”.
What can I say, it’s Korean. Why would it follow English speech patterns to begin with? And for that matter, why is there an “f” sound in the word “laughter”?
Languages are weird sometimes.
It could be that English speakers don’t pronounce it quite like the originators. How do the Japanese pronounce Subaru? I often hear it said here as Suburu.
A common Japanese phrase is “tyoto mate” (wait a minute), the first part of which tends to become “choto” on Western tongues.
Many sounds in foreign languages do not exist in English, therefore cannot be represented by English phonetics. When anglicized for translation purposes those sounds are approximated and some times bear no resemblance to the original sound. You could say it’s a silent y. Wyhy do hyu ask?
Howdy! Korea checking in here…
There’s a ‘Y’ in Hyundai because that sound is is there in the Korean language! I’ll type it in Korean (Çö´ë) but I don’t think it will come out right on the boards… the first letter in the Korean spelling is ‘H’, the second letter is a dipthong vowel (? I think)… pronounced ‘YUH’, the third letter is ‘N’… giving the first syllable a ‘HYUHN’ sound…
The second syllable consists of 2 letters; ‘D’ and a clipped ‘AY’…
Therefore, it’s properly pronounced ‘HYUHN-DAY’!
(I love it when there’s a GQ I can answer!
)
Hey! On my computer, the Korean I typed came out right! Did it on anyone else’s??
By the way, in commercials you see in the states, it’s almost always mispronounced as either “Hunday” or “Hyun-die” both are wrong…
Astrogirl’s name is “Hyun Jeong”, and no one in my family can pronounce it…
This is due to the transliteration system rather than the way the word is actually pronounced. One of the old (and most annoying) transliteration systems for Japanese renders “cho” as “tyo,” “sho” as “syo,” etc. The correct pronounciation is “cho.”
Doesn’t Beck come pretty close to the right pronunciation in “Debra?” “Come on pretty lady, step inside my Hyu daaahhhiiiii…”
Actually, it’s pronounced “Fuji Juukou” (Fuji Heavy Industries) here. 
Well, that’s the company name, anyway, the brand name is pronounced sue-bah-rue, just like in the US.
–sublight.