2 ms·

How to pronounce 100 most popular Chinese names

3 points by saymaciej 6y ago

saymaciej 6y ago
Is this a tool you believe would be of any use at work? Mainly in remote companies?
schoen 6y ago
I think it would be helpful to indicate what language the person in each recording is speaking. For example, the site has a sample of someone saying his own name "Zachary" as something like ['zaxari] but in American English it would be something like ['zækʌɹi]. This is especially significant for names that occur in multiple languages. In English names that begin with <J> are usually /dʒ/, but in French they're usually /ʒ/, in Spanish /h/, in other European languages very often /j/ -- even if they're spelled exactly the same way and have the same historic origin! "Jan" could easily have three different pronunciations depending on what country Jan comes from. (I know a Jon who pronounced it with [j] in his native country but consciously chose to encourage the American-style [dʒ] pronunciation after he moved to the U.S.) Another interesting question is how much people expect/prefer foreigners to attempt to pronounce their names in a native way. For example, most Brazilians named Thiago would probably pronounce it something like [tʃi'agu] but might not be upset if English-speakers pronounced it like [ti'ɑgoʊ]. (They might think "well, that's progress over [θi'ɑgoʊ]".) My name is pronounced [sɛθ], but Brazilians don't have /θ/ (let alone /-θ/!) and they normally say ['sɛtʃi] instead. (I've gotten to be OK with that and even joined in jokes about how it sounds very similar to the name of the number seven in Portuguese.) Mandarin has the sounds <zh> [ʈʂ], <j> [tɕ], <c> [tsʰ], <ch> [ʈʂʰ], <q> [tɕʰ], <sh> [ʂ], <x> [ɕ] which are all not present in English and which will probably sound to English speakers like /tʃ/, /ʃ/, /dʒ/, or /ʒ/ (the <zh> in "Zhang" on your site sounded like /dʒ/ to me as an English speaker but I'm imagining it's probably [ʈʂ]). So it's an interesting question what will happen if I speak to a person named Zhang and refer to him as /dʒaŋ/ (which is what I would probably say by naively imitating the recording on your site), as opposed to my non-pinyin-literate intuition of /ʒæŋ/. Can we assume that people generally just prefer if we get as close as possible as the phonologies of our own native languages allow?
- saymaciej 6y ago
  When you hover over the name if the user provided it it will display names origin - poor UX sorry. I see that you are very conscious about pronunciation so for you it won't be a big problem most of the time. I suppose saying the name as close as possible is the aim of the page, nobody will expect foreign people to say it perfectly but it helps, like try saying as close as possible Grzegorz without hearing it first... I though about it like an aid for new starters, for preparation before zoom meetings etc.
  - schoen 6y ago
    > I see that you are very conscious about pronunciation so for you it won't be a big problem most of the time. I still learned more from your site about how to pronounce Chinese <zh> than I knew before, and it's not as though I've never attempted to pronounce names containing it. :-) > When you hover over the name if the user provided it it will display names origin - poor UX sorry. Oh, I definitely didn't notice that. I guess I'd like to suggest that you require users to indicate it, again thinking about a name like Jan that could easily start with three drastically different consonants depending on what language it's in! > try saying as close as possible Grzegorz without hearing it first... I know there's something about <rz> in Polish that I don't expect, but I also don't know what it is! Yeah, that's a great example of how this could be useful. My intuition from English is like [ɡɝ'zɛɡɔɹz] which, now that I've listened to a Polish recording, is really really really far off. Even "Maciej" would have given me trouble before I'd heard people talking about Maciej Ceglowski.

3 points by saymaciej 6y ago

Is this a tool you believe would be of any use at work? Mainly in remote companies?

I think it would be helpful to indicate what language the person in each recording is speaking. For example, the site has a sample of someone saying his own name "Zachary" as something like ['zaxari] but in American English it would be something like ['zækʌɹi]. This is especially significant for names that occur in multiple languages. In English names that begin with <J> are usually /dʒ/, but in French they're usually /ʒ/, in Spanish /h/, in other European languages very often /j/ -- even if they're spelled exactly the same way and have the same historic origin! "Jan" could easily have three different pronunciations depending on what country Jan comes from. (I know a Jon who pronounced it with [j] in his native country but consciously chose to encourage the American-style [dʒ] pronunciation after he moved to the U.S.) Another interesting question is how much people expect/prefer foreigners to attempt to pronounce their names in a native way. For example, most Brazilians named Thiago would probably pronounce it something like [tʃi'agu] but might not be upset if English-speakers pronounced it like [ti'ɑgoʊ]. (They might think "well, that's progress over [θi'ɑgoʊ]".) My name is pronounced [sɛθ], but Brazilians don't have /θ/ (let alone /-θ/!) and they normally say ['sɛtʃi] instead. (I've gotten to be OK with that and even joined in jokes about how it sounds very similar to the name of the number seven in Portuguese.) Mandarin has the sounds <zh> [ʈʂ], <j> [tɕ], <c> [tsʰ], <ch> [ʈʂʰ], <q> [tɕʰ], <sh> [ʂ], <x> [ɕ] which are all not present in English and which will probably sound to English speakers like /tʃ/, /ʃ/, /dʒ/, or /ʒ/ (the <zh> in "Zhang" on your site sounded like /dʒ/ to me as an English speaker but I'm imagining it's probably [ʈʂ]). So it's an interesting question what will happen if I speak to a person named Zhang and refer to him as /dʒaŋ/ (which is what I would probably say by naively imitating the recording on your site), as opposed to my non-pinyin-literate intuition of /ʒæŋ/. Can we assume that people generally just prefer if we get as close as possible as the phonologies of our own native languages allow?

saymaciej 6y ago
When you hover over the name if the user provided it it will display names origin - poor UX sorry. I see that you are very conscious about pronunciation so for you it won't be a big problem most of the time. I suppose saying the name as close as possible is the aim of the page, nobody will expect foreign people to say it perfectly but it helps, like try saying as close as possible Grzegorz without hearing it first... I though about it like an aid for new starters, for preparation before zoom meetings etc.
- schoen 6y ago
  > I see that you are very conscious about pronunciation so for you it won't be a big problem most of the time. I still learned more from your site about how to pronounce Chinese <zh> than I knew before, and it's not as though I've never attempted to pronounce names containing it. :-) > When you hover over the name if the user provided it it will display names origin - poor UX sorry. Oh, I definitely didn't notice that. I guess I'd like to suggest that you require users to indicate it, again thinking about a name like Jan that could easily start with three drastically different consonants depending on what language it's in! > try saying as close as possible Grzegorz without hearing it first... I know there's something about <rz> in Polish that I don't expect, but I also don't know what it is! Yeah, that's a great example of how this could be useful. My intuition from English is like [ɡɝ'zɛɡɔɹz] which, now that I've listened to a Polish recording, is really really really far off. Even "Maciej" would have given me trouble before I'd heard people talking about Maciej Ceglowski.