Pronunciation of "Ngaio"

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 2:29 PM, James Harbeck <jharbeck at sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
>>i've heard
>>people here with no clear connection to that community pronounce
>>'Nguyen' with a word-initial [N], usually as [NaI.*n].
>
> Lucky you! Here in multicultural Toronto, I've heard the same name
> said [juN] and [nudZEn] and [nugEn]. [NaI at n] isn't quite a match to
> the Vietnamese, either, but it's much closer (ISTR it's more like
> [Nujn] - according to what I was told by one person bearing the
> name). Nonetheless, I agree that the trend is towards being able (or
> should I say willing) to pronounce the velar nasal word initially.

For further discussion on pronunciations of both "Nguyen" and "Ngaio",
see the comments on this Language Log post:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1254


--Ben Zimmer

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