{"id":1126,"date":"2010-05-05T21:22:34","date_gmt":"2010-05-06T04:22:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/?p=1126"},"modified":"2010-05-08T11:59:51","modified_gmt":"2010-05-08T18:59:51","slug":"how-to-pronounce-chinese-names","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/?p=1126","title":{"rendered":"How to pronounce Chinese names"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As a nice complement to my <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/?p=928\">French pronunciation class<\/a>, today I stumbled across this <a href=\"http:\/\/pages.cs.wisc.edu\/~jerryzhu\/readpinyin.html\">guide to pronouncing (romanized) Chinese names<\/a> (thanks, <a href=\"http:\/\/pages.cs.wisc.edu\/~jerryzhu\/\">Jerry<\/a>!).  Far from being merely a piece of curious trivia, I found this page to be both fascinating and useful, as many of the papers I read and reference are authored by researchers with Chinese names.  Owning a somewhat unusual name myself, it&#8217;s always been important to me to learn how others prefer their name to be pronounced.  <\/p>\n<p>I was already familiar with the pronunciation of &#8220;q&#8221; as &#8220;ch&#8221; (from the character Qiwi Lisolet in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky\">A Deepness in the Sky<\/a>) and &#8220;x&#8221; as &#8220;sh&#8221; (from a colleague named <a href=\"http:\/\/web.engr.oregonstate.edu\/~xfern\/\">Xiaoli<\/a>).  The surprises for me were that &#8220;c&#8221; is pronounced &#8220;ts&#8221;, &#8220;z&#8221; is &#8220;ds&#8221;, and &#8220;zh&#8221; is &#8220;dr&#8221; (!?).  There are some other important subtleties, but I think for now if I work on getting those right, then I&#8217;ll be on the right track!  <\/p>\n<p>In the meantime, you can practice your pronunciation by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mandarintools.com\/chinesename.html\">getting your own Chinese name<\/a>.  Just call me Wang Kang Rui (surname first):<center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.mandarintools.com\/namegif\/6C6A.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.mandarintools.com\/namegif\/5EB7.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.mandarintools.com\/namegif\/92B3.gif\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p><b>Update:<\/b> Jerry (a native Chinese speaker) has pointed out that Wang Kang Rui sounds rather masculine, and recommends instead Wan Qi Li, which transliterates to &#8220;ten-thousand elegant beauty&#8221;.  Niiiice!<br \/>\n<center><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/wan-qi-li.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/wan-qi-li.png\" alt=\"\" title=\"wan-qi-li\" width=\"123\" height=\"47\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1152\" \/><\/a><\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a nice complement to my French pronunciation class, today I stumbled across this guide to pronouncing (romanized) Chinese names (thanks, Jerry!). Far from being merely a piece of curious trivia, I found this page to be both fascinating and useful, as many of the papers I read and reference are authored by researchers with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[52],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1126"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1126"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1151,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1126\/revisions\/1151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}