Can someone advise me about pronouncing a name?

[Guest stuqb]

I have met a wonderful person named Liu Jinxia, but I am not sure how to pronounce her name. Can someone help me with a phonetic example? Thank you so much.

[confucius]

Knee how!

I can help you!

Her surname, Liu, is pronounced like "Lyo" and rhymes with yo-yo.

Jin Xia is pronounced like "jeen" and "shyaw" put together.

By the way, "I love you" is pronounced like "woe eye knee"

Good luck!

[Quest]

Close but not quite. The "u" in Liu is a "U" sound not "O" as in yo-yo. So if you can pronounce L + U then you've got Liu.

"i" in Jin is a semi-long "e", Jeen would be too long, somewhere between the short e and the long e would be good.

"x" is tricky, I guess the closest sound in English would be "sh" and "i" is always a semi-long "e" in Chinese. So "Sheea"(fast) would be close.

"Lyu J(1/2)een Sh(1/2)eea" (without the tones)

[confucius]

Yeah, right. Your average Zhou on the street is going to be able to handle all those dadgum semi-long vowels and fraction combinations.

Welcome to the Confucian Scool of Fonetics; Mandarin for the common man!

[Quest]

I assumed stuqb to be more than your average Zhou

[Guest oshee]

interesting !

and a test for first post

[cuthbert]

i think maybe the tone is wrong,it is important to the tone,liu2 jin1 xia4

[Guest dodo]

or it could be xia2 霞 which is used commonly in chinese names. without the chinese, you just can't really tell for sure.