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PaperclipPerfector  14hr ago (text post)   604 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for August 28, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I had a teacher named Fiess who intentionally mispronounced it as "Feiss" in order to avoid comparison with "feces".

List of the 1000 most common USAian surnames

SurnameRankProportion (%)
Cox820.084
Wang1510.057
Dixon1700.052
Ho5910.019
Ponce6830.016
Hancock6940.016

Nguyen has got to be one of the more frustrating Asian names. I think it is pronounced like "win". But for so long I'd say it with a mouth spasming "nnnggooyen".

It's pronounced like "ngwin", but the leading ng- is hard for most English speakers (when not preceded by a vowel), and "win" is a totally acceptable Anglicized pronunciation.

I can say the leading ng- well enough ... but the real trick is that even "ngwin" is Anglicized. The Vietnamese name is Nguyễn, and those accents all affect pronunciation.

The ê is easy enough, already part of "ngwin". That "hat" is just one of the diacritics that better distinguish vowels. Vietnamese e sounds like the e in English "petty", ê generally like the e in English "pretty".

But adding the tilde ễ means you've got a tonal vowel. These are six completely different vowels in Vietnamese and you can get completely different words with each. Oh, and I think that particular tone comes in both a North-Vietnam-accent and a South-Vietnam-accent flavor. I cannot say either correctly.

Wikipedia gives the IPA as [ŋwiən˦ˀ˥] (one syllable), which I interpret as equivalent to Anglophone-pronounceable "ng-wi-en" (three syllables).

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