Saying Foreign Words the Vietnamese Way !

Back when I was still working in banking, I once joined an online meeting with Head Office to deal with a troublesome case involving credit cards that fraudsters had used at a hotel called Phoenix.

When it was my turn to speak, I pronounced the hotel’s name as “fee-niks.”

The room went a bit quiet, and someone asked:

“Are you sure you’re talking about that hotel? Could it be a different one?”

Turned out it wasn’t that they didn’t know the Phoenix Hotel. They were just used to pronouncing it the Vietnamese way — spelling it out as “phou-nis.”

You can’t really blame Vietnamese people for not getting foreign pronunciation “right.” Saying foreign words the Vietnamese way is easier on the tongue, easier to remember, and often makes communication smoother.

For example:

• Levi’s is commonly pronounced “leh-vit” instead of “lee-vy-z.”
• Nike becomes “ni-ke” rather than “nai-ki.”

That also brings back memories of the subsidized-era days, when reading newspapers could nearly dislocate your jaw because of all the phonetic spellings: “New York” became “Niu-i-óc,” “Israel – Palestine” turned into “I-xra-en – Pa-le-xtin,” and William Jefferson Clinton was spelled out as “Uy-li-am Giép-phéc-xơn Cờ-lin-tơn.”

Fortunately, times have changed. These days, kids learn English properly from kindergarten all the way through university. The media usually keeps foreign names as they are, or uses standardized Latin spellings.

As for Chinese leaders’ names, Vietnamese has its own very special way of rendering them — so Vietnamese-sounding that they could easily be mistaken for local names: Hồ Cẩm Đào, Lý Khắc Cường, Chu Dung Cơ… If you’re not into politics, you might even think they’re just some familiar faces you’ve seen on TV.

Sometimes, pronouncing English correctly doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be understood.

On the other hand, pronouncing it incorrectly — but in a familiar way — often works just fine.

For instance, if you go to the market and ask for Levi’s jeans, pronouncing it properly as “lee-vy-z,” the shop owner might pause for a second and then reply:

“We only sell Leh-vit jeans here.”

So in the end, those who pronounce it “wrong” often understand each other faster than those who pronounce it “right.”

That’s why mispronouncing foreign languages a little doesn’t really matter.

As long as we understand each other, that’s good enough.

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Mr. Old Man, 10 January 2026

P/s: Lately I’ve been feeling a bit… past my prime, so I cheated a little and posted a photo from my “resistance days” to make myself look younger