Re: Name barbarisms

Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
>
> On Wed, 16 May 2001, Nik Taylor wrote:
>
> > Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> > > As for her middle name Kyung...<shaking head>
> >
> > That actually seems pretty easy to me, assuming the pronunciation is
> > something like /kjuN/, tho I could see how people might pronounce it
> > /kjVN/.  Were there other mispronunciations?
>
> It's more like /gjVN/.  I have no idea why it's so difficult.  /kjuN/ and
> /kjVN/ are the most common variants I hear.  I can't seem to get my
> boyfriend to soften the /k/ to a /g/.  <shrug>  Then again, I'm lousy at
> pronouncing non-Korean names, so....
Hmm. Well, reading it, it'd say /kjuN/, but after I was corrected I'd
have no trouble saying /gjVN/. But maybe that's just me, I generally
don't have that much trouble with names once I've heard them once. (or
twice)