Re: I like Chinese...

On Wed, Jan 22, 2003 at 04:18:59AM -0000, Bryan Maloney <slimehoo@...> wrote:
> Like many other laboratories, my current lab has Chinese researchers.
> I noticed that one post-doc had many names.  She was /wEn/ to the PI.
> She was /wIn/ to the graduate students, and she was /wun/ to her
> husband.  I eventually had to ask her how she pronounced her name
> (that's what I usually do).  It was fairly close to /wun/.
[snip]

I always get a sinking feeling when somebody asks me how to pronounce my
real name (most people here call me by my family name, as that's the
easiest part of my name), because I know I'll have to spend at least 15
mins explaining how the pronunciation differs widely depending on which
Chinese "dialect" you pronounce it in, and how it's usually
(mis)pronounced in English, why I don't care, and why they should've just
stuck with my family name, and why they really didn't need to have asked
in the first place. :-)

On another note, when I was an undergraduate, one time I had to take a
math course taught by a person called "Lian Pi". This got abbreviated as
"L. Pi" in the course calendar, and given the subject matter of the
course, I just could not help thinking, "this guy must be good, his name's
lambda + pi (as in 3.1415...)". :-)


T

--
PNP = Plug 'N' Pray

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