Why is the last name "Nguyen" pronounced as "win"?

Question

I am a native speaker and Nguyen is not pronounced this way. However, many vietnamese people with this last name encourage non-native speakers to pronounce it as so.

I understand that in order to pronounce Nguyen properly, a person must have a strong vietnamese accent... but there is barely any similarities between "Nguyen" and "win."

Why do people teach others to pronounce it this way? Is it because a more precise western pronunciation sounds too odd or foreign?

Answer 1

I am also a native speaker, and I can say that at least "win" is a much closer approximation than "New-gen."



I also believe that this is the closest western pronunciation can usually get since there's nothing close to the "ng" sound in English, and so it's very difficult to non-Vietnamese people to pronounce. And so we kind of try to cut off that part and have them just "win." The intonation required isn't exactly present in English, either.



So basically, we just can't really get any closer, and it's much better than some of the other pronunciations out there.

Answer 2

For precisely the same reason that Vietnamese people are rubbish at pronouncing English words. The languages are so dissimilar that it's hard to properly pronounce any words in one language if you're a native speaker of only the other.

Answer 3

It's pronounced just like you thought Hail

Answer 4

Well, they probably say it very fast, so to you, it sounds like "win".



The "ng" construct represents a sound that is in English, but isn't represented by it's on letter (i.e. Going). This is difficult to pronounce at the beginning of a word, since it's never at the beginning in English.



The rest of the word (the -uyen) can sound all like one syllable if you say it fast enough.

Answer 5

It's must easier to just give something that sounds similar than to stand there and try to explain the pronunciation slowly to someone who is likely never going to get it.



Another explanation:

I just checked Wikipedia, which says it's the standard English approximation.

Answer 6

I thought that, according to the movie "Good Morning Vietnam", that it's pronounced "nyoo-yen".

Answer 7

I thought it was pronounced New-gen, not win. That's odd.

Answer 8

i thought it was nu-wee-en