stevemcarroll / pronouncingnamesforenglishspeakers Goto Github PK

There are vast numbers of non-Mandarin speaking Chinese migrants, don't generalise please.
What about Cantonese, Hakka?

** just saw the mention of it not being covered yet...

First of all, great guide!

I think these two lines might be a bit misleading:

X is like a Sh sound (as in "Shot")
Q is like a Ch sound (as in "China")

Not all X are pronounced like Sh, especially Xi- and Qi- sounds. For example xiong2 熊 has its X pronounced more like a S sound as in "Sister". Same goes for Q. Perhaps Xu and Qu would have a more appropriate Sh sound instead.

Personally don't know how many Xu- words there are compared to Xi-, but changing the lines like so is less misleading:

Most X is like a Sh sound (as in "Shot")
Some X is like a Sh sound (as in "Shot")
Xu is like a Sh sound (as in "Shot")

What do you think?

I'm so excited that people are getting some use out of this.
I'll break out a contributors section so everyone shares credit.

In hungarian names there are ö and ő, like Erdős, and the writen S is pronounced like the sh in bush... Although Scarlett Johansson did a good job with budapeSt.

Chen (陈) does not rhyme with fun, instead it's more close to rhyme with London.

I think you were mistaken with Cheng (程) which sounds more close to fun.

The Chinese name you mentioned in the doc is primarily focused on Pinyin which is widely used in Mainland China. There's an alternative romanization system widely used in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, and especially among people who immigrants to English-speaking countries in the early 20th centuries:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade%E2%80%93Giles