GalacticCactus Forum
Forums => English & Linguistics => Topic started by: Annie Subjunctive on January 27, 2010, 10:12:08 AM
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Why do English speakers tend to pronounce Beijing as /be?????/ instead of /be??d???/? Why don't we use the J sound that's closer to our own? /?/ doesn't exist in Chinese - is it just because it sounds more exotic to us? Or is there something about the vowel environment that makes us say it that way?
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/?/ doesn't exist in Chinese - is it just because it sounds more exotic to us?
That's probably it. People do the same thing with Arabic words with /d?/. It's not a common sound in the foreign languages that English speakers are most familiar with, while /?/ is (or at least it's much more common). So people probably subconsciously assume that it must be /d?/ is not a foreign sound, while /?/ is.
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I'm gonna start pronouncing algebra with a /?/. :P
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Nice!
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Silly. It's al-heb-ra -- everyone knows this! ;)
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I've already exoticized Target.
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I'm gonna start pronouncing algebra with a /?/. :P
Algebra has been a nativized English word for centuries. I'm talking about Arabic words and names that are not nativized.
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Like Al-Jezeera?
I thought you were going to ask why we changed from Peking to Beijing. I say it wrong, to be honest.
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I'm pretty sure I've heard words like jihad and hejira and the city Fallujah with a /?/.
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Like Al-Jezeera?
I thought you were going to ask why we changed from Peking to Beijing. I say it wrong, to be honest.
Peking came from the old accepted system of romanizing Chinese words Wades/Giles. It was a decent start, but it was a very poor system. Pin Yin is far better and really it's only older scholars that still use Wades/Giles. It's virtually a certainty that Peking will be dead in less than 50 years.
I think the reason people say Beijing incorrectly is that it's written as one word. If we followed Chinese rules Beijing would be Bei Jing, Ziyi Zhang would be Zhang Zi Yi. Hong Kong is two words, so is Bei Jing. I'm fairly confident that if they had always split Beijing people would be saying it correctly.
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Peking came from the old accepted system of romanizing Chinese words Wades/Giles. It was a decent start, but it was a very poor system. Pin Yin is far better and really it's only older scholars that still use Wades/Giles. It's virtually a certainty that Peking will be dead in less than 50 years.
Also, it's my understanding that the two different systems are based on different dialects. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Beijing is the name in Mandarin, while (I believe) Peking is from Cantonese.
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Also, Wikipedia says that the correct pronunciation is not [be????], but [pè?t?í?].
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Peking came from the old accepted system of romanizing Chinese words Wades/Giles. It was a decent start, but it was a very poor system. Pin Yin is far better and really it's only older scholars that still use Wades/Giles. It's virtually a certainty that Peking will be dead in less than 50 years.
Also, it's my understanding that the two different systems are based on different dialects. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Beijing is the name in Mandarin, while (I believe) Peking is from Cantonese.
That sounds accurate, my grasp of Cantonese is tenuous. Using other words to sound out Beijing it's pronounced,
bay (as in down by the bay) jing (jingle jing). And it's second tone than first tone.
Seeing as how Wades/Giles was supposed to map out Mandarin however, it has some pretty glaring inadequacies. Certainly the fact that for a long time Brits and Americans could only learn Mandarin from the Cantonese people in the South informed their accents and hence their dictionaries.
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It's virtually a certainty that Peking will be dead in less than 50 years.
I think it will remain immortalized on Chinese restaurant menus.
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It's virtually a certainty that Peking will be dead in less than 50 years.
I think it will remain immortalized on Chinese restaurant menus.
Bah, I didn't even think about that, but you are right of course.
Wades/Giles is popular in Taiwan, it's on all the street signs. That, however is purely a function of them refusing to use the mainland designed Pin Yin system. It's also why they insist on using traditional characters as opposed to simplified.
Well, that and the fact that traditional characters are gorgeous, while simplified is a steaming pile of (insert your own undesirable here).
On a completely unrelated subject, no matter how much I kept telling myself that the cast of Firefly was butchering Mandarin, I felt partially responsible for not being able to understand them anyway.
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It's virtually a certainty that Peking will be dead in less than 50 years.
I think it will remain immortalized on Chinese restaurant menus.
And cookbooks!
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I don't know if Peking was from Cantonese - could have been, but I know a lot of dialects use the /k/ and it's only very recently that it's disappeared from standard Mandarin. Xi An dialect, for example, still pronounces a lot of the /d?/ sounds as /k/ (Jia, jian, etc.) and I was always a little baffled why my friend from Xi An who gave me my Chinese name pronounced it mei kia - until I realized that everyone else would pronounce it mei jia. You'd find Chinese speakers all over the country who really do say something close to bei king, fu kien, nan king.
Also, Wikipedia says that the correct pronunciation is not [be????], but [pè?t?í?].
I don't really expect English speakers to replicate the weirdness that is Mandarin consonants.
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It's also why they insist on using traditional characters as opposed to simplified.
And it's communist ;)
I guess that was another reason I dropped out of immersion chinese. They wanted us to learn both systems of writing, and it pissed me off to be forced to learn the communist simplified characters.
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It's also why they insist on using traditional characters as opposed to simplified.
And it's communist ;)
I guess that was another reason I dropped out of immersion chinese. They wanted us to learn both systems of writing, and it pissed me off to be forced to learn the communist simplified characters.
Eh, it's a necessary evil now. At this conjecture so many more Chinese people use simplified characters it is really advantageous to know how to read them if you do any business in China.
I'm still trying to obtain fluency in traditional characterization, I can't tell you how giddy I am about learning simplified characters.
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Mucus from Hatrack/Sake wanted to post this but registering is taking time apparently.
Also, it's my understanding that the two different systems are based on different dialects. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Beijing is the name in Mandarin, while (I believe) Peking is from Cantonese.
That sounds like a plausible guess, but Cantonese would sound more like (sounding it out, don't know IPA) buc-ging which is certainly closer to Peking than Beijing but not quite. Wikipedia actually is of the opinion that Fujianese is closer by way of a different treaty port, Xiamen which predates Hong Kong. (Amoy in the later article)
Peking came from the old accepted system of romanizing Chinese words Wades/Giles
This is actually incorrect to my surprise, Beijing in Wade-Giles should actually be Peiching not Peking.
It's virtually a certainty that Peking will be dead in less than 50 years.
Aside from the Peking Duck example, another curious example is that Peking University despite being in Beijing itself and administered by the state has the official policy of using 'Peking University' as its name for English-language materials.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peking_University (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peking_University)
Anyways, there is also this blast from the past summary:
Instead, we find people from Canton
saying Pakking, people from Meihsien saying Petkin, people from Amoy saying Pokking, people
from Swatow saying Pakkiii, people from Fuchow saying Pceyqking, and people from Shanghai
and Suchow saying Paqchin. It is curious that all of these pronunciations resemble our Peking
more than they do MSM Beijing. In truth, this is no mere accident or manifestation of backward
vulgarity. It is due, on the contrary, to a pattern of linguistic evolution that can be described and
dated fairly accurately.
http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp0...ing_beijing.pdf (http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp019_peking_beijing.pdf)
A more modern article gives this helpful summary as well as a lot of other good thought
To summarize, the variation in the form of the name of the capital of China arises from three different sources:
* different underlying names
* different pronounciations in different dialects of Chinese
* different romanizations of the same pronounciation of the same name
The combinations that you are likely to run into are the following:
Beijing
is what you get if you use the Pinyin romanization for the Mandarin pronounciation of the current official name.
Peking
is what you get if you use the old postal system romanization, which was based either on the pronounciation in a Southern dialect or an archaic pronounciation in Mandarin of the current official name.
Peip'ing
is what you get if you use the Wade-Giles romanization of the Mandarin pronounciation of the Nationalist name.
Peiping
is what you get if you use the Wade-Giles romanization of the Mandarin pronounciation of the Nationalist name but drop the apostrophe.
Beiping
is what you get if you use the Pinyin romanization of the Mandarin pronounciation of the Nationalist name.
Yenching
is what you get if you use the Wade-Giles romanization of the Mandarin pronounciation of the old literary name.
Yenjing
is what you get if you use a Pinyin-style folk romanization of the Mandarin pronounciation of the old literary name. This isn't the true Pinyin romanization, which would be Yanjing. I've never seen that outside of China except in scholarly contexts.
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog...ves/000583.html (http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000583.html)
Also, in the article itself I think they refer to Yanjing beer as being the most popular which I think is false being outpaced by Tsingtao beer (for good reason IMHO).
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They also call it Pekin in Japan. Just sayin'...
I recently started wondering if we got the name Japan from Riben. It's certainly a lot closer than Nihon.
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They also call it Pekin in Japan. Just sayin'...
I recently started wondering if we got the name Japan from Riben. It's certainly a lot closer than Nihon.
In Japan I've heard it occasionally pronounced Nipon. More likely Japan was some other language's best approximation that gained currency.
edit: Incidentally, Tokyo is Dong Jing (Eastern Capital) where as Bei Jing is (Northern Capital). Nan Jing (Southern Capital) is of course the old capital of China. I used to ask Taiwanese people were Xi Jing (Western Capital) was, they always seem to come up with humorous suggestions.
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More likely Japan was some other language's best approximation that gained currency.
Like Riben, perhaps? :P
I only ever heard really old people say Nippon.
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More likely Japan was some other language's best approximation that gained currency.
Like Riben, perhaps? :P
I only ever heard really old people say Nippon.
I'm not sure how it worked out but Ri Ben literally means, "sun's origin" or land of the rising sun. What does Nihon or Nippon mean in Japanese?
It's very possible that if it means the same thing, that the Japanese didn't stray far from whatever the Chinese word was from Japan.
Their words for watermelon I believe are stark in their similarities.
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???
:)
The wikipedia page has what looks to be a reasonable account of the name's origins.
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I used to ask Taiwanese people were Xi Jing (Western Capital) was, they always seem to come up with humorous suggestions.
Based on the historical dynasties that have their capitals in each of the cities, I think that Xian would be the best bet.
In fact, Wikipedia notes that it actually was renamed to Xijing from 1930 till 1943.
Additionally, it also notes that Tokyo doesn't get its name as an eastern capital from the Chinese but since a Japanese government moved their capital from a western city (looks like Kyoto), renaming Edo to 'Eastern Capital' after the move.
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I don't think I suggested that Dong Jing comes from the Chinese. Merely that as there is a Beijing, Nanjing, and Dongjing, that a Xijing would be nice.
I wonder why Xi'an was called Xijing during the period you specified.
edit: Also, love your avatar!
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Yep, Kyoto was the capital for quite some time (with a really brief interlude). Before that, the main capital of note (and substantial historical record) was Nara.
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The English word for Japan came to the West from early trade routes. The early Mandarin or possibly Wu Chinese (??) word for Japan was recorded by Marco Polo as Cipangu. In modern Shanghainese, a Wu dialect, the pronunciation of characters ?? 'Japan' is Zeppen [z??p?n];
I win! :)
I don't think I suggested that Dong Jing comes from the Chinese.
It doesn't come from but because they share characters, Japanese and Chinese tend to take each other's place names verbatim but pronounce them as they would in their own languages. Tokyo is Tokyo because the Japanese named it "Eastern Capital" (as opposed to Kyoto - "capital capital") and Dong Jing is just the Chinese reading of those characters. ?? is ?? in both Chinese and Japanese - they both write the name the same, but in Chinese it's pronounced Zhong Guo while in Japanese it's Chuugoku.
They do this with personal names too - most foreigners go by katakana versions of their names, but Chinese people in Japan go by the Japanese pronunciation of their Chinese names. My friend ??? pronounced her name Xu Hai Ling, but went by Jo Kairei in Japan.
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BB: Thanks.
I don't think I suggested that Dong Jing comes from the Chinese.
Sorry, anyways just take it as a fun fact.
I wonder why Xi'an was called Xijing during the period you specified.
If I had to guess about Xijing, that should be during the warlord period. Maybe a warlord with grand dreams? Some good luck thing? My Google-fu is unhelpful.