Need help with pronunciation of Asian-American names...

[fjorner]

In all seriousness and with the best intentions of racial understanding in mind...
I work at a research facility where there are many, many asian scientists coming and going, whose names I try futily to pronounce all the time. Few people really know how these brilliant minds really would like their names pronounced, and, ofcourse, they are all very busy. They understand and smile and try to comprehend but don't offer me any correction in pronouncing their names.

So i come and beg before the altar of Anandtech universal knowledge.

For sake of the innocent, I will switch up these names.. please provide pronunciation keys in english context. For example "shi" or "dow". For example I know that Nguyen is "ne-Win", or something very similar. That's fairly common.

Lots of these names I get, after all I am fairly cultured, but some of them like the ones I have listed below are pretty frustrating as to how to pronounce them without eliciting a giggle or a look of total confusion.

I'm afraid i'm not familiar with the cultures and I couldn't tell you if the context is Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, Chinese, or another. I realize this may make it difficult.

Jainping
Liu
Hui
Zhijun
Chih-chun
Young-Mee
Qian
Xiaoying
Huiyan
Huang
Bingzhong
Jung
Kwang-Pyo
Hyeung-Rak
Yuanguang
Xiaotuan
Liang
Tuong
Tuet
Xi
Xie
Xiachun
Xue


Thanks for any and all help you can provide.

 

[Nitemare]

Took me almost a year to be ably to promounce Nguyen properly....


good luck

 

[Electric Amish]

I'd bet Shaq could help you.

amish

 

[manly]

Originally posted by: Nitemare
Took me almost a year to be ably to promounce Nguyen properly....


good luck

Nguyen is often Anglicized to "Win" and that's close enough to get the message across.

Most of those names are Chinese. It should take maybe a week to learn the basic sounds in Chinese and the pinyin to pronounce all the names. I guess it would take a bit less time to just rote memorize a short list of Chinese names. The problem with official pinyin is that some of the consonants used are nothing like their English counterparts. Pinyin is just an encoding of the Chinese language with the Roman alphabet, so if you just pronounce the words as if they're English, then that's why your colleagues politely smile back at you.

For example, Qian is roughly close in sound to "Chen" in spoken English (a totally different Chinese name). In spoken Chinese, they sound distinctly different of course.

As another example, the sound of the leading consonant X is close to "sh" so you'd pronounce Xiao as "Shiao", assuming you're able to produce those sounds with your voice box. Some adults are just unable to deal with foreign language sounds regardless of training. The few Korean and Vietnamese names on your list seem like they could be pronounced in standard spoken English, and it wouldn't be too butchered.

Chinese pinyin is what is messing you up though.

 

[fastz28]

Most of the list are easy, except for the ones with X and Z. Those are more than likely from mainland China.

Why don't you just ask them or some locan asian friends. Kinda hard to do this over the net.

 

[joe678]

Originally posted by: Electric Amish
I'd bet Shaq could help you.

amish

LOL...its funny because he's racist...

 

[lupohki]

Go watch "Tokyo Breakfast" ... that'll teach you everything you need to know.

 

[McPhreak]

Jainping
Liu - (lee-oh)
Hui (who-ay)
Zhijun
Chih-chun
Young-Mee
Qian (chee-ahn)
Xiaoying (sheeao-eeng)
Huiyan (who-ay yan)
Huang (Who-ang)
Bingzhong (Bing-dzong)
Jung
Kwang-Pyo
Hyeung-Rak
Yuanguang (yuen-guang)
Xiaotuan (sheeao-tuan)
Liang
Tuong
Tuet
Xi (shee)
Xie (shee-eh)
Xiachun
Xue (shoo-eh)

Here's a little bit of help with some of the phonetics.

edit: some of those are korean names so I can't help you there.

 

[TuxDave]

Originally posted by: McPhreak
Jainping
Liang (leeeang)
Xiachun (I think this is sheeea-chwen)

That's all I got... too bad they don't get their names translated using proper Pinyin, then I could tell you how to pronounce everything.

 

[Angrymarshmello]

Jainping - jangping
Liu - lou
Hui - hi
Zhijun -
Chih-chun - chi chun
Young-Mee - young me
Qian -
Xiaoying - yaoying
Huiyan - hu yan
Huang - hong
Bingzhong -
Jung - jung
Kwang-Pyo -
Hyeung-Rak - huang rak
Yuanguang -
Xiaotuan -
Liang - lang
Tuong - tong
Tuet -
Xi
Xie
Xiachun
Xue

That's how I've been taught to pronounce them