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I have a friend who has a Vietnamese surname, which is Nguyen I find it really hard to pronounce it.
I try to pronounce but I just can't.
Is it normal?
just say nuh-when
youre not a native viet speaker why would you get it perfect
just make an effort
Everyone has a word set they can't pronounce I think.
I can't pronounce ventriloquist.
Quite normal. I cannot quickly find the reference; but, my memory is that there are well over 100 different phonetic sounds in all the languages in the world.
English only uses 44 of those (that reference I could find).
If you did not grow up speaking the phonetic sound, it can be very difficult to learn to speak it as an adult; and may be impossible to do so.
Don't feel bad. It took me about 1 year to learn to pronounce my wife's 1st name close enough to be understood by others from her homeland.
Nguyễn or Nguyen? It's an _extremely_ common Vietnamese surname. It's also pretty common in places like Australia but, outside of Vietnam, it's usually Nguyen.
Even inside Vietnam there are two different pronunciations depending on dialect but both not only start with a consonant never found in the initial position in English, but a tone. Tone can be especially difficult as, in English, tone is only used to convey tone of voice and how you're using a word or name rather than being intrinsically linked to it.
In a nutshell, the name has not one but two attributes particularly alien to English so it's normal to have trouble with it, especially if your friend is pronouncing it in the Northern Vietnamese way.
Alot of those foreign names arent even pernounced how they're written. I think its because foreign ppl dont know english and when they write their name in english they dont know wtf theyre doin