Originally Posted by
FlyingMoose
I find the use of Western name by Asian folks still very odd. The Japanese don't do it and I have no problem reading or pronouncing their names, the same with many Chinese, Korean or Singaporese names. Names like Li, Chen, Zhang, Fei, Wu, Ni are not hard to pronounce for Westerners. The main issue is that a lot of folks have the exact same names so its hard to distinguish when you have 8 xiaosomethings, hos or bingbings in a meeting. Having a 5 feet Chinese guy show up in a meeting calling himself Jason, Hunter or a Chinese woman called Cinderella or Mercedes just doesn't add up.
What about Ng?
Those you wrote are last names, and the English pronunciation is not the same as what you say it in Cantonese/Mandarin etc. I don't remember how many times I had to correct my kids to silent the last letter when they were trying to pronounce words in Cantonese.
Zh is not as easy as you think if you want to pronounce it properly, my Chinese teacher was trying very hard to correct their pronunciations.