Pronunciation of "Ngaio"

[Chris Waigl]

On 9 May 2009, at 16:57, David Bowie wrote:
>
> p.s. 'Ng' is pretty consistently [EN], though, in my observation.


This is what I thought until I met a person of this name -- a
programmer in his 20s called Mark Ng. I naturally asked him how he
pronounced his name, expecting either [EN] or [N]. The answer was,
surprisingly, [En.dZi:], ie as if spelling the two letters (with
primary stress on the first syllable, secondary on the second). This
surprised me enough that I wanted to say I found this very odd, and if
he had come up with the pronunciation himself or was it used in his
family? However, I caught myself in time to notice this would have
been an extremely rude thing to say. By the time I had thought of how
to reformulate my question, the conversation had moved on.

Best,

Chris Waigl

PS: I also have a co-worker named Ng, who is US-based. His name is
pronounced [EN].

--
Chris Waigl -- http://chryss.eu -- http://eggcorns.lascribe.net
twitter: chrys -- friendfeed: chryss

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