How to say Hong Kong

[Tom Zurinskas]

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I watched "Squawk Box" this morning on CNBC.  A person spoke about the "Hong Kong" dollar, pronouncing it ~Haung Kaung~ (~au as in "laud"), as I do.  But another person called it ~Haang Kaang~ (~aa as in "Saab"), an "awe-dropper".  The first person then switched to saying it as ~Haang Kaang~.  That's the way it appears to be going.

M-w.com shows ~Haang Kaang~ in phonetics and the speaker speaks it as such.  Al the other words ending in "ong" are marked as ~au but "wrong" and "strong" are misspoken as ~raang and ~straang by the lady speaker.  I think the same lady mispronounces "awe" as "ah" ~aa in m-w.com.

How the heck can you mispronounce a one-phoneme word.  You would think that if the symbol stands for "awe" that the speaker would say it correctly.  M-s.com is an awe-dropping mess.  They need to be straightened out.


Tom Zurinskas, first Ct 20 yrs, then Tn 3, NJ 33, Fl 9.
Learn the alphabet and sounds of US English at http://justpaste.it/ayk

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