Pronunciation of "Ngaio"

[Wilson Gray]

"Dat _WIN_," you say? Well, cut my legs and call me "Shorty"! I've
always heard his name as "Dat _WEN_", regardless of who was
pronouncing it! Despite the fact that I personally always pronounce it
as "Dat _WIN_." Didn't he grow up in *Texas", wherein /En/, as
elsewhere behind the Cotton Curtain and 'mongst the colored
everywhere, is always pronounced [In]?

You never know. Dialect, like payback, is a bitch. ;-)

-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain





On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 7:53 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
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> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: Pronunciation of "Ngaio"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 7:52 PM -0300 5/9/09, David A. Daniel wrote:
>>There is a(n) (in)famous poker player named Scotty Nguyen. He pronounces his
>>name Scotty Win - could be more marketing than etymocultural. (Hmmm. Appears
>>I may have just coined etymocultural. Remember: you saw it here first.)
>>DAD
>>
>
> Yes, I remember Scotty Nguyen (with the
> pronunciation you note) from WSOPs past. Â There's
> also a Dallas Cowboys linebacker and now coach
> named Dat Nguyen from Vietnam (although he grew
> up in Texas). Â According to the wiki site for him
> at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dat_Nguyen the
> name is pronounced Vietnamese style with initial
> velar nasal (note the IPA transcription at the
> beginning), but I seem to recall that was not the
> standard practice by announcers when he was
> playing. Â Another web site suggests "[win]",
> which I suspect is intended to represent [wIn] as
> in Scotty. Â Kudos to wikipedia for the old
> college try, though.
>
> LH
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
>>Jim Parish
>>Sent: Saturday, May 09, 2009 6:56 PM
>>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>Subject: Re: Pronunciation of "Ngaio"
>>
>>
>>
>>James Harbeck wrote, of "Nguyen":
>>> Â Lucky you! Here in multicultural Toronto, I've heard the same name
>>> Â said [juN] and [nudZEn] and [nugEn]. [NaI at n] isn't quite a match to
>>> Â the Vietnamese, either, but it's much closer (ISTR it's more like
>>> Â [Nujn] - according to what I was told by one person bearing the name).
>>> Â Nonetheless, I agree that the trend is towards being able (or should I
>>> Â say willing) to pronounce the velar nasal word initially.
>>
>>I remember, back in the '60s, hearing the name pronounced [nwIn].
>>Haven't heard it (in any pronunciation) much since the end of the
>>Vietnam War, but then this area hasn't attracted too many Indo-Chinese
>>immigrants.
>>
>>Jim Parish
>>
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