Lowjen

There's a man in our Mandarin class named Lawrence, but our teacher calls him Lowjen. I cannot figure this out, because her English is excellent and I've never heard her badly mispronounce any other words. One time she said "homewife" instead of "housewife"- and another time she said that some Chinese people "sparkle" their soy milk with salt. Both of these mistakes had nothing to do with pronunciation. Also, they were endearing.

But every week when teacher Zhang is calling roll, and I see her eyes fall on the name "Lawrence," and all of a sudden she hesitates, and then slowly says, "Lowwjen." Not Lorjent, not Lojence. Low-jen.

This reminds me of the infinite misspellings and mispronunciations related to Leighton's name. Just so you know, it's pronounced (G)LAY-dun. There's just the slightest hint of a hard "g" sound at the beginning there.