Question Help! Need Assistance with Some Prounciations

[Arrowstar]

Hi Everyone,

As some around here know, I'm a graduate student studying astronautics. I also happen to teach a basic calculus course to help pay for that education. In my class, I have a few Chinese students who have particularly difficult names to pronounce. What I'm looking for is someone help me turn the pinyin into a phonetic pronunciation I can then memorize.

I've got most of them down, but there are five that still allude me. Here's the list (last names obviously withheld to protect identities):

Zijian
Zhongyu
Jingyuan
Yumeng
Yun

Let me give an example of what I'm looking for so that everything is clear. I have another student named "Xin" and that individual states their name is pronounced "sheen." I'd be looking for you to give me the "sheen" part, preferably correlated to the "Xin" part so that I know which name goes with which pronunciation.

Thank you for your help!

 

[agentgonzo]

Have you tried asking them themselves? They'll likely be better to advise than us!

 

[Grover]

AFAIK (so dont expect it to be greatly accurrate)

zid-jian
song-you
sing-uan
yum-eng
jun

the beauty of chinese names written in english is that they are only translated to this language by sound, so just say it like it reads

 

[Eccentrus]

Since you're a US citizen, I'll assume that you have English as your first language, well actually, it's pretty hard for a native English speaker to learn how to speak Chinese, especially since in English, many consonants are breathed through, leaving a trail of an "h" in the middle of the consonants and the next words, and in Chinese, the breathed through air makes a difference on what one word means, not to mention the variety of the tones that have to be used, and because of these difficulties it's actually more acceptable for foreigners to read the Ping Yin (read as Ph'Ing In) as if it's in English rather than to try to pronounce it the Chinese way, there's absolutely no compatibility actually between the latin alphabets as it is and the Chinese language, even in its reduced simplified form today.

Well, if you really want to try it

Zi Jian: The Zi would be read by stretching your lips sideways and with clenching teeth like speaking "t" and then try to pronounce the ch in change but without the air breathed through, and the i is not pronounced like i is in english, but more like e in Nerve, so in short it's pronounced more closely in English like Tze. The Jian part is easy, the J is like ch in change but without the air breathed through, and the rest is ee-and, so more like C'ee-and but don't end it with the d

Zhong you : the Zhong is pronouned like Ch in change but stretch your upper lips upwards, and you is just like yow

Jing yuan, is very simple just the Jing is like C'eeng with C' is like J in Jian and the yuan is "yoo-and" just like the an in Jian

Yum Eng would be like Yoom Æng with the æ pronounced like the a in Mare

and Jun is a little bit tricky, it can be pronounced like C'oon or C'ün (the umlaut u in German) and the C' is like how Jian is pronounced

Well, hopes that it will help jai jian

 

[Arrowstar]

Have you tried asking them themselves? They'll likely be better to advise than us!

Yep. I learned the names of my other Chinese students by asking them how they say their names and then writing down the pronunciation to practice later. It was just these five students that I couldn't get to tell me (because I was busy or because they left before I could ask) at the end of a class last week. Undoubtedly I'll have to continue asking them, and the purpose of me asking here was just to get a starting point so I don't totally screw up their names when I ask them "is that how you say your name?" for the fourth time.

Thanks, Grover and Eccentrus! Should be a big help! :tiphat:

EDIT: Eccentrus, reading your post again, I should point out that my aim isn't to be perfect (which I won't be) but instead to get close enough to their real name so that I don't feel that I'm insulting them every time we speak.

 

[Pipcard]

Besides, how do you pronounce héxiè?

 

[Lord Wasteland]

You pronounce it, I believe (I took a nine-month Mandarin course seven years ago), He(long x)-zie