Nguyen

.

comic explanation for the nguyen

My uncle is named that. It's pronounced "fook" more or less, not f'uck

And nguyen is just the most common name for vietnamese people, just like for latinos you except juans, rodriguez, gonzales, etc

For koreans, you expect kim/park. For chinese i think it's tran or less. Forgot what japan is for.

Tran is definitely viet.
Chinese... there are a lot of common last names but like... Zhang, Li, Chen, etc.

There's a lot of Wong too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_name
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_com...e_surnames
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_com...n_surnames

Japanese is actually quite varied in last names, so, there isn't real a super-dominant one.

I liked how my last name is listed in the Vietnamese surnames. . . .

This thread has reminded me of how I hate explaining it to people.

Thanks.

Why is it that Vietnamese seems to have a very Roman-like alphabet when it is an Asian language? I was going to originally ask why translations of some Asian languages with non-Roman alphabets produce Romanized forms that are spelt far from how they sound (i.e. Nguyen being pronounced "win") but then I looked at Wikipedia and I found that Vietnamese looks very Roman, just with a lot of accents and stuff.

Why is it that Vietnamese seems to have a very Roman-like alphabet when it is an Asian language? I was going to originally ask why translations of some Asian languages with non-Roman alphabets produce Romanized forms that are spelt far from how they sound (i.e. Nguyen being pronounced "win") but then I looked at Wikipedia and I foudn that Vietnamese looks very Roman, just with a lot of accents and stuff.

France colonized Vietnam.

Because it's HEAVILY influenced by France.

DAMN NINJAS!

There's also this, but most people these days can't read it (including me).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_com...e_surnames

This is actually really interesting.

I never knew that Zhang/Chang and Xu/Hsu and such were just different Romanizations of the same Chinese last name. (Honestly Pinyin is the only one that makes sense though. The others are junk.)

There's also this, but most people these days can't read it (including me).

Yeah. Can't read it.

There's also this, but most people these days can't read it (including me).

Om nom nom nom

sorry double post!!!!!!!!!!!

Why is it that Vietnamese seems to have a very Roman-like alphabet when it is an Asian language? I was going to originally ask why translations of some Asian languages with non-Roman alphabets produce Romanized forms that are spelt far from how they sound (i.e. Nguyen being pronounced "win") but then I looked at Wikipedia and I found that Vietnamese looks very Roman, just with a lot of accents and stuff.

if u actually pronounce word-by-word N G U Y E N slowly, with NG together making the GW, and UYEN making the -IEN, forming GWIEN or WIN

Why is it that Vietnamese seems to have a very Roman-like alphabet when it is an Asian language? I was going to originally ask why translations of some Asian languages with non-Roman alphabets produce Romanized forms that are spelt far from how they sound (i.e. Nguyen being pronounced "win") but then I looked at Wikipedia and I found that Vietnamese looks very Roman, just with a lot of accents and stuff.

A French Jesuit missionary invented the Vietnamese writing system we use today. It imports the sounds in the omnomnom language into Romanized characters. The Omnomnom language is Chinese based, but we have our own words for things.
Like the sound "Hỏa" in Chinese is fire, but in Vietnamese the sound is "Lửa".
Basically it is an international presentation of our old gibberish language, created upon trial and error efforts to communicate with us by Alexander de Rhodes.

Om nom nom nom

Hahaha I see what you did there.

The reason why there're only few surnames true to Vietnamese is because they're adopted after the kings of Vietnam, and there were only a few, thus you see a vast amount of common surnames, with Nguyen being one of the most common.

There is a slight difference between the surname Nguyen vs the first name Nguyen. Literally, it's the little "?" (which we all leave out when written it down for english, thus look the same).

The reason why there're only few surnames true to Vietnamese is because they're adopted after the kings of Vietnam, and there were only a few, thus you see a vast amount of common surnames, with Nguyen being one of the most common.

There is a slight difference between the surname Nguyen vs the first name Nguyen. Literally, it's the little "?" (which we all leave out when written it down for english, thus look the same).

u mean the ~ right? Nguyễn not Nguyển

The reason why there're only few surnames true to Vietnamese is because they're adopted after the kings of Vietnam, and there were only a few, thus you see a vast amount of common surnames, with Nguyen being one of the most common.

There is a slight difference between the surname Nguyen vs the first name Nguyen. Literally, it's the little "?" (which we all leave out when written it down for english, thus look the same).

I have an aunt named Nguyen Nguyen. Nguyện is her given name and Nguyễn is her last name.

I've always pronounced it New-yin....