Current Events > Apparently Nguyen is pronounced "Nwen"

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Nothing fucks me up like trying to pronounce Vietnamese names.

I learned this from watching 'Birdemic' on RiffTrax

For me it was poker player Scotty Nguyen. They pronounced his last name like "win".

Welp. I've definitely said it wrong...

I thought it was like "win", obviously the "W" is pronounced rather differently from English.

Ive met a lot of Nguyens in college and none of them pronounced it like that.

The pronunciation is something along the lines of "ngwen", but with a tone on the 'e' that starts to dip and then rises back again, depending on the particular dialect of Vietnamese.

The first sound is the same -ng sound that's in words like sing, its just awkward for English speakers to pronounce because it's in a place in the word that we never see in English.

Airhammy posted...

For me it was poker player Scotty Nguyen. They pronounced his last name like "win".

It's "Win" but with the W has some kind of a lead in that doesn't sound exactly like a regular W. I suck at pronunciation keys I figured nw was more accurate than just w but it's probably neither.

I believe it's just Wen, not even Nwen

I learned this from working with someone named Nguyen.

Dan_Haren- posted...

I believe it's just Wen, not even Nwen

Possibly, you just gotta stress the W in weird ways.

I know many vietnamese people and I work with several. They all pronounce their names "Win".

I'm sure theres plenty of Vietnamese people here who could weigh in.

HylianFox posted...

I learned this from watching 'Birdemic' on RiffTrax

I learned it from watching 'Gleaming the cube'.

it's just pronounced "when"

It depends on the dialect, you can listen here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nguyen#Pronunciation

northern dialect sounds more like "win" while southern dialect is more tonal, almost like a twang

I always thought it was "new-yen" but luckily I've never had to say it out loud

I'm reminded of this:

https://youtu.be/r3-xrBN5p14

xMythic posted...

I'm reminded of this:

https://youtu.be/r3-xrBN5p14

lol i do always think of this

seriously it's just "win" or "when"... it's a super common name everyone should be able to pronounce it tbqh

I had a bunch of Vietnamese friends with that surname. Depending on who you asked, it was either "Win" or "Gnwin," in my experience.

I get why people can't pronounce it. Ng at the start of a word is pretty uncommon in American English. 3 consecutive vowels is pretty uncommon too. But even though "win" isn't exactly correct, it's a good enough effort that makes most people happy.