Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc.

Den 21. aug. 2008 kl. 17.19 skreiv R A Brown:

> Maybe in the case of 'Oslo' - but it should certainly _not_ be
> assumed that is always (or even usually) the case. For example, the
> modern English pronunciation of 'Paris' is *not* due to spelling
> pronunciation. the borrowing was made centuries ago when the final -
> s was pronounced in French. Since then both English & French have
> developed in their own ways and the name has shared in the
> development; neither the modern French nor the modern English
> pronunciation reflects the native pronunciation at the time of
> borrowing.
Yes, I'm aware of that. There are a lot of cases like Paris. But of
more recent borrowings, I believe there are a lot of cases like Oslo
as well.

> Nor is it true that anglophones give pronunciation based _English_
> rules. The most common pronunciation of Beijing that I hear on the
> British media pronounces the medial _j_ as [Z] - and judging by one
> email I read in this thread, this is not unknown on the other side
> of the Pond. These people are giving the _j_ the *French*
> pronunciation because "It's a _foreign_ word, in'it?"
Yeah, right. That's the English pronunciation I've heard most often,
too. I guess that's what we call hypercorrection in linguistics.

>>> Nativized forms of many well-known place names exist and are of
>>> long standing. What do Norwegians call Moscow?  Not [moskva] I'll
>>> wager.
>> You just lost a wager. It's pretty common here to stress the first
>> syllable, but when we do, there's often someone nearby who will
>> jump in to correct us.
>
> Bully for the Norwegians!
>
> The question bilingual nations (and the multilingual Swiss) has
> been raised a few times in this thread. So what do the Norwegians
> do in such cases? What do they call the capitals of Wales (Caerdydd
> _or_ Cardiff) or of Belgium (Brussel _or_ Bruxelles), and how do
> they pronounce them?
Only Cardiff is accepted for the former according to standard
Norwegian Bokmål, but for the latter, both Brussel and Bruxelles are
allowed. The Norwegian name for Switzerland is Sveits, a form
slightly different from the Danish and Swedish ones, neither of which
are any more identical to any Swiss name for the country. Generally,
country names are allowed to be more nativised than other place names.

>> There is, by the way, one language that nativises even more
>> weirdly than English: the Welsh.
>
> I suspect Mandarin will nativize even more weirdly.
Of course...

>> Many of the German names were borrowed into Scandinavian, too, but
>> have since been replaced. We formerly used Prag for Praha, for
>> example, and Neapel for Napoli.
>
> ...and, presumably, give the _h_ in Praha a voiced pronunciation as
> in Czech.
He, a voiced h? No, we don't have that in Norwegian, so it goes
voiceless.

What's the IPA or CXS code for that Praha h? Or is it a way to write /
G/ or similar?

> You'll be pleased to hear that Livorno is (almost) always its
> modern Italian spelling nowadays - indeed the older 'Leghorn' would
> not be recognized by many moderns.
Well, I'm actually not so partisan in this stuff, you misunderstand
me. But I'm certainly not so fond of nativisation as most of you
other guys are either. Leghorn for Livorno - kind of fun, really.

> For centuries we pronounced the final -s in 'Calais' (as it was
> pronounced when the city was ruled by English monarchs  ;)  But now
> a Frenchified pronunciation is the norm in Britain - indeed, anyone
> pronouncing the way it was still said a century or so back would
> now be considered ignorant. So there is still hope for us
> anglophones    :)
Don't think I've ever heard it with an s, even in old films. But the
stress is always on the first syllable, isn't it?

LEF

Replies