Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc.

I don't think it's the syllable/morpheme ratio,  but the lack of
stress in the source lang.  Even there it's not consistent: 'Szechuan
vs Bei'jing vs 'Tai'pei.  'Tokyo, Hiro'shima or Hi'roshima,  etc.



On 8/19/08, Eric Christopherson <rakko@...> wrote:
> On Aug 18, 2008, at 2:44 PM, Henrik Theiling wrote:
>
>> Hi!
>>
>> Mark J. Reed writes:
>>> To go back to the subject in the header for a second - am I correct
>>> that at the time of the creation of the romanization "Peking", the
>>> name was actually pronounced [pe'k_jiN], but then the
>>> diphthongalization and palatalization went further and now we have
>>> [pej'ts\iN] ?
>>
>> I forgot to mention: the stress on the second syllable is probably due
>> to misinterpretation of the Mandarin tones.  Both syllables are
>> stressed in Mandarin, but higher pitch on the second might indicate
>> stress to speakers of whatever other language.
>
> In English at least it seems to be very common to stress the last
> syllable of names taken from Chinese and other languages will mostly
> monosyllabic morphemes. To me it feels like each syllable is
> perceived as a separate word for purposes of stress, and I think
> often the last word in a multi-word name is stressed. (It definitely
> feels that way if the syllables have hyphens between them.)
>
--
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Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

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