How to learn how to pronounce and remember names of Chinese students? This question was originally asked on Academia.Stackexchange.com. I would normally not cross-post, however, I think this question might be an exception, where both sites may provide complementary perspectives. I think cross-posting is a better option than migration in this particular case.



Most Australian universities have a large number of international students. Common countries of origin include China, Singapore, and Malaysia. When interacting with students, it's much nicer if you can learn their name and pronounce it correctly. To reduce the scope of this question, I thought I'd limit it to Chinese names, but it could be broadened to include other Asian countries.

Several challenges emerge with Chinese names for an Australian (and presumably others from North America, Europe, etc.):


challenges of pronunciation
challenges when reading a Chinese name of knowing which of name is the name to address the student by
challenges in remember the name. In particular, I find it difficult to remember a name that I can't pronounce. Furthermore, the less familiar I am with a name and the fewer associations I have with a name, the harder I find it is to remember.


Questions


How can I learn how to pronounce names of Chinese students?
How can I better recall names of Chinese students? e.g., get acquainted with common names, build some semantic knowledge around Chinese names.


I'd be particularly interested in any good online resources for this purpose.
How can I learn how to pronounce names of Chinese students?

Short of learning Chinese? Avery suggested learning how to read pinyin. However, this ignores the problem that there are sounds in Chinese that do not exist in English. For instance, following some consonants, pinyin "u" is pronounced like the German "ü". Pinyin "sh" and "x" are both pronounced differently from English "sh". Oh yeah, and every syllable has a tone. So, are you prepared to learn all of that and more? If so, then Avery's answer is spot on. Go learn pinyin.

I suspect your question was more along the lines "As an English speaker in an English-speaking classroom, how can I pronounce Chinese students' names in an acceptable way?"

If that's the case, then here's my advice:


Ask the student how they would like you to say their name. This is just a basic respect thing. Of course, there are a couple caveats:


Presumably you'd like to have an idea of how to pronounce their name before you ask them.
Some students (especially the stereotypical asian students) will not correct you even if you ask them to. In high school, a substitute teacher asked one of my friends--whose name is "Jie Luo"--if his name was pronounced "J.Lo". He mumbled "Yeah sure", and it was only because some other students corrected the teacher that he wasn't known as "J.Lo" for the whole week.

Learn to recognize pinyin syllables and come up with English approximations to them. I'd especially focus on the syllables where the pinyin spelling is not suggestive of the English approximation. For instance:


The "j", "q", "x", "c", and "zh" initials
The "ang", "e", "en", "eng", "ui", "un", and "iu" finals
The syllables "zi", "ci", "si" and "zhi", "chi", "shi"



How can I better recall names of Chinese students? e.g., get acquainted with common names, build some semantic knowledge around Chinese names.

For Chinese surnames, I'd familiarize yourself with the top few names in this list, as well as their various romanizations. For instance, the names "Zhang" and "Chang" are both transliterations of the surname "张" (one in pinyin, one in the wade-giles system formerly used in Taiwan). For given names, you're pretty well out of luck. There aren't very many "common" given names. Many people's given names are unique.