Vietnamese Accents

[OldBoring]

Oh. Thank you very much guys. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this l/n transition does also occur in Cantonese, right?

Yep, and some Mandarin dialects.

/n/ shifting to /l/ is characteristic of quite a few kinds of Cantonese, like Hong Kong Cantonese. And the variety that I'm learning too - Saigon Cantonese.

And lexicalized in Minnan, such as Minnan - Bam lam.
Saigon Cantonese has influences from Teochew Minan and Hakka, so IMHO that might be the source of this feature, because Hong Kong Cantonese developped that feature only in the past 40 years.
I also heard this shifting in people from Jiangxi (not sure what his first language is - if Gan, Hui or Wu) and from Taishun (near Wenzhou, where Min dong is spoken).

Now, I have a question about Saigon Vietnamese.
My girlfriend from there told me that "My" is pronounced approximately as /mei/. That's the transliteration (or transcription?) of the Chu nom 美. But according Wikipedia, "y" is pronounced the same as "i"... doesn't mention this /ei/ pronunciation.

And the Chu nom 豔 is transliterated as "Diem", which makes sense in Saigon, as it's pronounced /jɛm/. Right?
I'm curious how it would be transliterated in the North.

[Pangu]

...of the Chu nom 美.

And the Chu nom 豔...

美 and 豔 are both 漢字 (Hán tự, chữ Hán, chữ Nho or chữ Trung Quốc, take your pick) and not chữ Nôm.

Chữ Nôm refers to characters, some original, but mostly "newly made" to represent words in Vietnamese that are considered "native", as opposed to imported from Chinese.

ba (three) would be considered a chữ Nôm but 三 tam (also three) would not.

Note: Unilang's forum returned error messages when I tried to post chữ Nôm as text so I had to use an image.

[mōdgethanc]

Now, I have a question about Saigon Vietnamese.
My girlfriend from there told me that "My" is pronounced approximately as /mei/. That's the transliteration (or transcription?) of the Chu nom 美. But according Wikipedia, "y" is pronounced the same as "i"... doesn't mention this /ei/ pronunciation.

AFAIK it is in every Vietnamese dialect I know of. But in Vietnamese, long vowels tend to be a little diphthongized so maybe she's saying [mɪj] and you're mishearing it as [mei].

And the Chu nom 豔 is transliterated as "Diem", which makes sense in Saigon, as it's pronounced /jɛm/. Right?
I'm curious how it would be transliterated in the North.

I think /jiəm/ is more like it, but don't quote me on that. Vietnamese has so many goddamn diphthongs it's hard to keep them all straight.

[OldBoring]

Chữ Nôm refers to characters, some original, but mostly "newly made" to represent words in Vietnamese that are considered "native", as opposed to imported from Chinese.

Thanks for the correction. I thought Chữ Nôm referred to any "hanzi".

so maybe she's saying [mɪj] and you're mishearing it as [mei].

You are probably right.
In English the long [i:] also tends to be diphtongized as [ɪi] and sometimes I mishear it as [ei].

[JackFrost]

And the Chu nom 豔 is transliterated as "Diem", which makes sense in Saigon, as it's pronounced /jɛm/. Right?
I'm curious how it would be transliterated in the North.

I think /jiəm/ is more like it, but don't quote me on that. Vietnamese has so many goddamn diphthongs it's hard to keep them all straight.

/ziə̯m/ in Hanoi, /jiə̯m/ in Saigon.