Ngai (surname)

Ngai is the transliteration of three Chinese surnames in Hong Kong based on Cantonese:

• 魏, also common in northern China as Wei (pinyin: wèi)
• 危, pinyin: wēi
• 倪, pinyin: ní

All three characters are written the same way in both traditional and simplified writing systems.

The native IPA pronunciation of these three characters is ŋɐɪ. This causes especial difficulty to speakers of English for two reasons:

• The engma as an initial consonant is unknown in English. (However, even in modern Cantonese, the omission of initial engma is considered passable, albeit a mark of careless speech.)
• In English, the so-called "long i," which the sound ai usually represents in transliteration, represents a complementary distribution of IPA aɪ (as in hide) and ɐɪ (as in height); or represents the first diphthong exclusively, depending on region. In both cases, English phonotactics call for the first sound in this case. However, in Cantonese the two sounds are distinct (in systems of Cantonese romanization the two sounds are represented by aai and ai), and the second diphthong is appropriate.

Therefore, individuals with these last names, when speaking English, may for convenience pronounce the last name as naɪ or aɪ.