Quote:
Originally posted by Joe Johnson
[...]some mistakenly refer to the motor as the "Atwood Motor" rather than the Chiaphua Motor, pronounced "Chip-a-wha," as it should be).[...]
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Sorry Joe, but that's a serious Americanization of a Chinese proper name. It has nothing to do with English pronunciation rules. I did some research on this a year or two ago after hearing at least a dozen different pronunciations of "Chiaphua" at Regionals.
Technically, the company is "Chiaphua Industries Limited" (CIL), a Hong Kong corporation. That is a contracted version of the earlier "Chiap Hua Industries". The original company was named after an oriental person, "Chiap Hua".
<searches site> Darn. They USED to have a Pronunciation Guide on their website, but they've since revamped the site and the original History page is gone. Here's some of the remaining data though:
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http://www.chiaphua.com.hk/show.jsp?ppid=14
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http://www.chiaphua.com.hk/show.jsp?ppid=8
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http://home.cclmotors.com/story.htm
<cracks fingers> I'll take a shot at it...
If I remember correctly, it's SOMETHING like: "Chi-A-up HooWAH". The first name is blended, not in three syllables. It starts with either a SH or the hard CH. The vowel is more I then E (together "Chi" is somewhere between "shy" or the start of "chives"). The emphasis is on something RESEMBLING a "long A" in the middle of Chiap. The HW phoneme in the last name is only an approximation. The last name starts with the huff of the H transitioning immediately into the W.
I may be WAY off though. Bear in mind that this is from a several year old memory of a non-Chinese speaker. But I am SURE it's Chinese phonemes and emphasis rules. Since you're speaking of a person with their "name pair", I am also sure that the ONLY significant vocal break is between the p of "Chiap" and the h of "Hua".
I guess you'll have to ask someone who speaks Chinese. They can give you a much better pronunciation of this "proper oriental name" than I can EVER approximate here with our alphabet.
One thing for sure though: It definitely does NOT sound ANYTHING like our Native American Tribe name "Chippewa", which is what I hear so many using these days (and thought it WAS for a while!!!).
- Keith