It’s actually pronounced more like “yo” in Chinese (尤 Yóu). I’m not sure why he doesn’t correct people who say “yu”. Maybe he’s just given up and decided that how you say his name in English.
Having a name that is misspelled sucks. Either you don’t give a shit and stop correcting people (and the people around you who find out they’ve been mispronouncing your name will be hurt that they weren’t important enough to be corrected), or you give a shit and you dedicate 3% of your life to correcting people, some of whom will insist you don’t know how to pronounce your own name. It’s a no-win situation.
People tend to get my first name right, but I’m astonished at how badly people manage to get my surname wrong. And I’m not talking about people who are native speakers of a language with a totally different set of base phonemes. It’s an Irish name, but is spelled in English exactly as it’s pronounced, you a lot of people manage to get it wrong. If I had a non-British name, I’d have very low expectations of native English speakers being able to get it right (French people soften the ch because they don’t have a hard ch sound, but aside from that typically get it closer than a lot of English people who throw random rs in the middle or change the vowel sounds).
French people soften the ch because they don’t have a hard ch sound
They might not think of it in the same way as Anglophones think of English “ch”, but French tch represents the same thing, as in French Tchad (English “Chad”, the country).
Chinese and Vietnamese (and some other languages from the area, not Japanese tho) both hinge on differences between intonation on vowels that sound the same to somebody who only heard a western language growing up. You’re almost certainly going to get it wrong no matter how much you try, so getting it wrong in the same way most westerners do is the best way to actually be understood.
Yeah, I sort of imagined you had a pre-show pronunciation check given the level of professionalism of your show. (Good episode, BTW. Can’t believe he didn’t tell his wife.) I think he must have just given up and gone to Yu to make things easier. I know my friends named “Zhang” usually just say “zang” instead of something more like “jong”.
I note that (assuming Pīnyīn) the pronunciation of “Yu” is not like the English word “you” /ju/ but is canonically /y/, which is unknown in standard varieties of English.
Hey Adam, thank you for your excellent work on corecursive, definitely one of my favorite podcasts and some of the stories have been a source of inspiration for my own professional journey.
I love that this podcast provides transcripts. I get that it’s intended to be listened to, but I much prefer reading through it.
It’s actually pronounced more like “yo” in Chinese (尤 Yóu). I’m not sure why he doesn’t correct people who say “yu”. Maybe he’s just given up and decided that how you say his name in English.
Having a name that is misspelled sucks. Either you don’t give a shit and stop correcting people (and the people around you who find out they’ve been mispronouncing your name will be hurt that they weren’t important enough to be corrected), or you give a shit and you dedicate 3% of your life to correcting people, some of whom will insist you don’t know how to pronounce your own name. It’s a no-win situation.
Don’t ask me how I know. =\
People tend to get my first name right, but I’m astonished at how badly people manage to get my surname wrong. And I’m not talking about people who are native speakers of a language with a totally different set of base phonemes. It’s an Irish name, but is spelled in English exactly as it’s pronounced, you a lot of people manage to get it wrong. If I had a non-British name, I’d have very low expectations of native English speakers being able to get it right (French people soften the ch because they don’t have a hard ch sound, but aside from that typically get it closer than a lot of English people who throw random rs in the middle or change the vowel sounds).
They might not think of it in the same way as Anglophones think of English “ch”, but French tch represents the same thing, as in French Tchad (English “Chad”, the country).
Good to know! I listened to him pronounce his name and tried to mimic him, but I guess I got it wrong.
Chinese and Vietnamese (and some other languages from the area, not Japanese tho) both hinge on differences between intonation on vowels that sound the same to somebody who only heard a western language growing up. You’re almost certainly going to get it wrong no matter how much you try, so getting it wrong in the same way most westerners do is the best way to actually be understood.
Yeah, I sort of imagined you had a pre-show pronunciation check given the level of professionalism of your show. (Good episode, BTW. Can’t believe he didn’t tell his wife.) I think he must have just given up and gone to Yu to make things easier. I know my friends named “Zhang” usually just say “zang” instead of something more like “jong”.
I know right! That was the craziest thing to me.
What I usually do is just ask people to say their name, and go off that. But yeah, that is still subject to my abilities.
I note that (assuming Pīnyīn) the pronunciation of “Yu” is not like the English word “you”
/ju/but is canonically/y/, which is unknown in standard varieties of English.I was curious if there was a video of him saying his name, and found this, around 5 seconds in.
Hey Adam, thank you for your excellent work on corecursive, definitely one of my favorite podcasts and some of the stories have been a source of inspiration for my own professional journey.
Hey @codekobold, Thanks for listening!