Correct Chinese pronunciations on "Xu" and other minor improvements

[nerrons]

Xu does not sound the same as "shoe" because it's the simple form for Xü, where the ü is exactly like the German ü or French u.

Su and Hu on the other hand are like "soo" and "who".

[enedil]

I agree that the shoe pronunciation is incorrect, however oo = u is also not exact (but maybe better than alternatives)

[nerrons]

Any suggestions for the "oo" part? I can't think of a syllable that comes closer

[SteveMCarroll]

I completely agree that the exact pronunciation requires you to make the ü sound. the problem is that this just doesn't exist in English and I'm trying to make reasonably close approximations. As an example, english SH is also pronounced different than chinese X (tongue is located differently. I'm tempted to eventually add something like a foot note... i think most English speakers could probably do the ü just with the instructions of "make ee sound with round lips" and a few practice runs. but at the end of the day, I think this doc should be for people who literally have no clue but want to get in the vicinity. my basic use case is "someone in this meeting from has Name X, how should I try to approximate it?" do you think that footnote would be a good approach?

[nerrons]

Hi Steve, maybe we should think of this as a fallback mechanism:

1. If you know French/German or other languages that use /y/, go ahead!
2. If you only speak English, here's a trick for you to approximate it (round-lips "ee" sound). And maybe attach a YouTube video.
3. If that doesn't work out for you, go with "shoe".

This can also be applied to other sounds and should be easily understood by programmers. We might want a clean and consistent "UI" for the whole fallback thing though, like a formatting convention. Just my $0.02