5 ms·

TIL that "Ng" is pronounced "Wu" in Mandarin

rwmj 5y ago
Another strange transliteration is the most common Vietnamese-descent surname Nguyễn, pronounced roughly as Win, n-Win or n-Yen (with the n being very quiet). I do wonder why these difficult transliterations were chosen over more obvious ones.
- zo1 5y ago
  TIL. Been reading that name as "N-Goo-Yen" for the longest time as I haven't spoke to anyone with that name yet.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    "Ng" is like the "n" in Frank, not the "n" in France.
- glandium 5y ago
  What I learned a while ago is that it's pronounced like gwen, but with the tongue deeper in the mouth for the g.
- jltsiren 5y ago
  It's not a transliteration. Vietnamese is written using Latin script. Because the modern script is still relatively new, there is a strong correspondence between the written form and the standard pronunciation. And because Vietnamese is not Latin, many odd-looking compromises had to be made to represent all the sounds using something resembling the Latin alphabet. The situation with Chinese is similar. Pinyin is not a transliteration standard but a standard way of writing the Beijing dialect phonetically using Latin script.
- teddyh 5y ago
  http://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/on-surnames http://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/on-surnames
- wink 5y ago
  From my very cursory research it could depend on where in Vietnam the person is from. I only did the research because I stumbled over several youtube videos where people were like "you are stupid if you don't pronounce it win" but I thought the guy I knew at school should probably know his name better than random youtube person and he definitely pronounced it between 'n-Yen' and 'n-Youn(g)'.
yorwba 5y ago
Or "Huáng" (黄) or "Ruǎn" (阮) or maybe something else, depending on what the actual surname is and where they're from. (阮 is also the Chinese character for the Vietnamese surname Nguyễn.)
baybal2 5y ago
cafard 5y ago
Kim Ng, who works for the Miami Marlins, pronounces her surname "Ang", I believe.

rwmj 5y ago

Another strange transliteration is the most common Vietnamese-descent surname Nguyễn, pronounced roughly as Win, n-Win or n-Yen (with the n being very quiet). I do wonder why these difficult transliterations were chosen over more obvious ones.

zo1 5y ago
TIL. Been reading that name as "N-Goo-Yen" for the longest time as I haven't spoke to anyone with that name yet.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  "Ng" is like the "n" in Frank, not the "n" in France.
glandium 5y ago
What I learned a while ago is that it's pronounced like gwen, but with the tongue deeper in the mouth for the g.
jltsiren 5y ago
It's not a transliteration. Vietnamese is written using Latin script. Because the modern script is still relatively new, there is a strong correspondence between the written form and the standard pronunciation. And because Vietnamese is not Latin, many odd-looking compromises had to be made to represent all the sounds using something resembling the Latin alphabet. The situation with Chinese is similar. Pinyin is not a transliteration standard but a standard way of writing the Beijing dialect phonetically using Latin script.
teddyh 5y ago
http://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/on-surnames http://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/on-surnames
wink 5y ago
From my very cursory research it could depend on where in Vietnam the person is from. I only did the research because I stumbled over several youtube videos where people were like "you are stupid if you don't pronounce it win" but I thought the guy I knew at school should probably know his name better than random youtube person and he definitely pronounced it between 'n-Yen' and 'n-Youn(g)'.

yorwba 5y ago

Or "Huáng" (黄) or "Ruǎn" (阮) or maybe something else, depending on what the actual surname is and where they're from. (阮 is also the Chinese character for the Vietnamese surname Nguyễn.)

baybal2 5y ago

cafard 5y ago

Kim Ng, who works for the Miami Marlins, pronounces her surname "Ang", I believe.