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Topic:
The Vietnamese family name 'Nguyen'
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rsterling78
Registered:
May '02
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Date Posted:
5/16 8:33pm
Subject:
RE: The Vietnamese family name 'Nguyen'
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ellybeanjay posted:
The cultural insensitivity comes in when you say "screw your way of transliterating, I'm going to pronounce it 'NehGooYen' because it's your own damn fault for not spelling it in a way that makes sense to me."
I assume it's English speakers who are doing the transliterating. I'm just don't see why the letters chosen bear no resemblance to the pronunciation.
By the way, I'm going to start calling Japan "Nippon" or "Nihon" since those are the proper names for it and they're as easy to pronounce as "Japan".
According to Wikipedia:
The old Malay word for Japan, Jepang (modern spelling Jepun, although Indonesian has retained the older spelling), was borrowed from a Chinese language, and this Malay word was encountered by Portuguese traders in Malacca in the 16th century. It is thought the Portuguese traders were the first to bring the word to Europe. It was first recorded in English in 1577 spelled Giapan.
Too bad! It's Nippon or Nihon. Deal with it.
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Uncle_Enzo
Registered:
Feb '08
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Date Posted:
5/16 8:36pm
Subject:
RE: The Vietnamese family name 'Nguyen'
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The Cowboys used to have a linebacker named Dat Nguyen, so I got used to the pronunciation after listening to a few games.
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Jedi_Keiran_Halcyon
Registered:
Dec '00
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Date Posted:
5/16 8:37pm
Subject:
RE: The Vietnamese family name 'Nguyen'
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I'm all in favor of that sort of thing. I don't see why we can't refer to Espana and Rossiya instead of Spain and Russia. Americanized names for foreign places are beyond silly.
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rsterling78
Registered:
May '02
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Date Posted:
5/16 8:42pm
Subject:
RE: The Vietnamese family name 'Nguyen'
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Jedi_Keiran_Halcyon posted:
I'm all in favor of that sort of thing. I don't see why we can't refer to Espana and Rossiya instead of Spain and Russia. Americanized names for foreign places are beyond silly.
Whoa, JKH and I agree on something!
I can see "United States" being translated/transliterated into other languages since they have their own words for "united" and "states". But I really don't get Italia being changed to "Italy" and Polska being changed to "Poland".
Although I am going to pronounce Vietnam as "Win".
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GrandAdmiralJello
Title:
Emperor
• EUC
• JCC
Registered:
Nov '00
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Date Posted:
5/16 9:04pm
Subject:
RE: The Vietnamese family name 'Nguyen'
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Jedi_Keiran_Halcyon posted:
I'm all in favor of that sort of thing. I don't see why we can't refer to Espana and Rossiya instead of Spain and Russia. Americanized names for foreign places are beyond silly.
Americanized? Spain was Spain long before there was an America.
And English is far from the only language to do this. Names have been altered and converted since the beginning of time.
It's a bit ethnocentric to imagine Americans are alone in this.
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rsterling78
Registered:
May '02
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Date Posted:
5/16 9:14pm
Subject:
RE: The Vietnamese family name 'Nguyen'
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GrandAdmiralJello posted:
Americanized? Spain was Spain long before there was an America.
No, no, Spain was España long before there was an America.
By the way, how is Cthulhu pronounced? I've always pronounced it "ellybeanjay".
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Ed_Abbey
Registered:
Jan '08
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Date Posted:
5/16 9:15pm
Subject:
RE: The Vietnamese family name 'Nguyen'
- Date Edited:
5/16 9:17pm (2 edits total)
Edited By:
Ed_Abbey
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lololo them chinamen shore have funny names, ayeop.
Great thread rsterling.
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Dark Lady Mara
Title: Manager Emeritus
Registered:
Jun '99
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Date Posted:
5/16 9:17pm
Subject:
RE: The Vietnamese family name 'Nguyen'
- Date Edited:
5/16 9:18pm (1 edits total)
Edited By:
Dark Lady Mara
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@ Jay
It is, but some languages are better about that than others. I've never really understood why so many place names have to be changed in certain languages. That's got to count as some kind of cultural insensitivity too.
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jp-30
Registered:
Dec '00
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Date Posted:
5/16 9:22pm
Subject:
RE: The Vietnamese family name 'Nguyen'
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Jedi_Keiran_Halcyon posted:
I'm all in favor of that sort of thing. I don't see why we can't refer to Espana and Rossiya instead of Spain and Russia. Americanized names for foreign places are beyond silly.
Why are you limiting yourself to geographical words? What about using the indiginous term for foreign animals and plants too?
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rsterling78
Registered:
May '02
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Date Posted:
5/16 9:32pm
Subject:
RE: The Vietnamese family name 'Nguyen'
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Dark Lady Mara posted:
@ Jay
It is, but some languages are better about that than others. I've never really understood why so many place names have to be changed in certain languages. That's got to count as some kind of cultural insensitivity too.
I don't want to be culturally insensitive, so how is your name pronounced? Is it "Strikethrough Dark Lady Mara"? "Dark Lady Mara Strikethrough"? "Red Strikethrough Dark Lady Mara"? "Dark Lady Mara Strikethrough Red?"? "Dark Lady Mara Red Strikethrough"?
My name is pronounced "rnguyen78".
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Dark Lady Mara
Title: Manager Emeritus
Registered:
Jun '99
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Date Posted:
5/16 9:34pm
Subject:
RE: The Vietnamese family name 'Nguyen'
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Depends. If there's some species of animal that only lives in one country and has only ever been referred to by one name, then I think it would make sense if other languages adopted that name instead of making up their own term.
That said, if a species only lives in one country, people in other countries will have much more limited contact with it and much less need to pronounce its name than, say, the name of a country they have diplomatic relations with.
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DarthPoojaNaberrie
Registered:
Jun '05
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Date Posted:
5/16 9:46pm
Subject:
RE: The Vietnamese family name 'Nguyen'
- Date Edited:
5/16 9:47pm (1 edits total)
Edited By:
DarthPoojaNaberrie
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ellybeanjay posted:
I don't know for sure, but this is my best guess, knowing what I do about Arabic transliteration. My guess is that each part of the Nguyen corresponds to a different character - Win is the way that we simplify it, but I doubt that's the way that it's traditionally pronounced. The 'ng' is probably one character in and of itself, that sounds like our 'w', but has its own nuances. The same with the 'uy'.
this is the first post that even attempted to actually answer the valid question in the original post. i've wondered that alot, how languages that use completely different characters come to choose the ones that they do when translating. if i was translating my name to a different-character language, i'd want them to pick whatever characters would most help the native speakers figure it out.
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ellybeanjay
Registered:
Jul '00
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Date Posted:
5/16 10:11pm
Subject:
RE: The Vietnamese family name 'Nguyen'
- Date Edited:
5/16 10:12pm (1 edits total)
Edited By:
ellybeanjay
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DarthPoojaNaberrie posted:
if i was translating my name to a different-character language, i'd want them to pick whatever characters would most help the native speakers figure it out.
Well, there are some sounds in our language that don't exist in other languages. For example, there is no 'p' sound in Arabic, so if you were trying to explain how to pronounce Pooja to someone who spoke Arabic, there really isn't any character that'd be like it. So you might combine two or more already existing letters to symbolize the sound that doesn't exist in that language. When translating Arabic to English, one of the commonly used 'letters' is 7, because the sound that it represents doesn't really exist in the English language (at least not as a letter).
For what it's worth, I don't understand why we call Spain 'Spain' rather than 'Espanya'
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GrandAdmiralJello
Title:
Emperor
• EUC
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Registered:
Nov '00
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Date Posted:
5/16 10:15pm
Subject:
RE: The Vietnamese family name 'Nguyen'
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ellybeanjay posted:
For what it's worth, I don't understand why we call Spain 'Spain' rather than 'Espanya'
We should go all the way and call it by its proper name: Hispania
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ellybeanjay
Registered:
Jul '00
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Date Posted:
5/16 10:18pm
Subject:
RE: The Vietnamese family name 'Nguyen'
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GrandAdmiralJello posted:
We should go all the way and call it by its proper name: Hispania
Except that that's the whole peninsula, rather than just one country.
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