Pronunciation question

[FrankW35]

Quick pronunciation question as the usual answer I get from my students is
"it doesn't matter. Say it either way." How do you pronounce the following
first name:

Nhan

Is it "Non" like in nonfat milk
" Nan" rhyming with man?
"Nyan" with the " a" sound like aahhh as in "awful"
or "Nyun" rhyming with "gun"

Also, last name Tran--is the a like in cat or short u like in cut

Thank you for any response. I won't even go into what I had to go through
the first time I had a student named Phuoc.

[Jerry Coley]

FrankW35 wrote:
>
> Quick pronunciation question as the usual answer I get from my students is
> "it doesn't matter. Say it either way." How do you pronounce the following
> first name:
>
> Nhan
>

or "Nyun" rhyming with "gun"
"Nyun" is the closest one.

>
> Also, last name Tran--is the a like in cat or short u like in cut

Tran is kind of rhymes with the Nhan above, it is pronounced
"juhn", something like that. It is so difficult to translate the pronunciation
to written english. 'TR' in vietnamese is pronounced kind of like a 'j', if you use a
'j' sound you will be VERY VERY close (probably indistinguishable from truly correct).

There is one thing you should know, the 'n' at the end of a word. If you wish to sound
like Southern vietnamese, choose a sound between 'n' and 'ng' for this.

So Tran would be between 'juhn' and 'juhng'. But if you wish to sound like Northern
Vietnamese (like my pronunciation), then you would say 'juhn'

To be safe, try to stay with southern dialect.

JerryC

[Jerry Coley]

[Nguyen C. Vu]

In article <4m3hq8$s...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>, fran...@aol.com (FrankW35) writes:
> Quick pronunciation question as the usual answer I get from my students is
> "it doesn't matter. Say it either way." How do you pronounce the following
> first name:
>
> Nhan
>

> Is it "Non" like in nonfat milk
> " Nan" rhyming with man?
> "Nyan" with the " a" sound like aahhh as in "awful"

"Nyun" if your student is a male (Actual Vietnamese spelling is "Nha^n").

> or "Nyun" rhyming with "gun"
>

"Nyan" if your student is a female (actual spelling is "Nha`n").

> Also, last name Tran--is the a like in cat or short u like in cut
>

Tran is pronounced "Trun" (because of the accent marks "Tra^`n").

It is very hard to explain how a word may sound thru written words. After all,
nobody at work could pronounce my first name (which BTW is a very common
Vietnamese last name) correctly until I said it to them.

> Thank you for any response. I won't even go into what I had to go through
> the first time I had a student named Phuoc.

You're welcome :-).

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