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Low and Wang
Friday, June 27
There's this small irritation that wells up inside me whenever I hear some people pronounce the Chinese surnames 'Low' and 'Wang'. The irritation comes about not because I have mortal enemies named Low and Wang, but rather because of the gross mispronounciation that seems so prevalent.
I don't understand why people pronounce 'Low' to sound like 'Lau'. Look, if God had wanted people to call them Mr or Miss Lau, he would have spelt l-a-u out nicely on their birth certificate. He's spelt it out as l-o-w instead so it should be pronounced as Low. As in high, low.
Same thing with Wang. Wang is the hanyu pinyin of 王 in most cases, and therefore it should be pronounced as such. You know, to rhyme with Huang. NOT WENG! Whenever people pronounce it as Weng in my mind I'm thinking of something longer. Or rude. Like Wenger or...wanker.
I might be totally wrong though, 'Lau' and 'Weng' might actually be the correct way to pronounce Low and Wang. I haven't gone and trawled places like Wikipedia on how to pronounce them phonetically. I shouldn't though, otherwise the next thing I know 'Ng' should be pronounced as 'Arf' or something.
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