Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc.

Henrik makes a very logical point. It is not unrespectful to use an
established name in a certain language. There is a certain similarity
between that and standing in the pantry in New York talking about your pet
"dog" as opposed to your pet "gou3" just because it came from China, or
because it's a Shih-tzu. Some might feel offended by the comparison, and I
apologise in advance, but I say they boil down to the same thing. As
linguists and budding linguists or linguafans, aren't we supposed to be very
aware of the idea that the same thing is represented by different sounds in
different tongues? Again, that is the whole reason why they are called
different languages in the first place.
The nativised names are simply loanwords affected by the destination
language's sound-changes and constricted by its phonology. Treat them as
such. The example of Switzerland provides a good example -- should French
speakers be obliged to say Chvaïtse as they travel from Geneva to Zurich
(and I wouldn't say the WHO has its headquarters in Génève)? German speakers
would be unable to reciprocate (correct me if I'm wrong) because there's no
initial [s].

I will call Oslo [Osl@U] when I'm speaking English, [aU4 s=1 lwO2] Mandarin,
[osM4o] Japanese, and [uSlu] Norwegian (or when I'm in Norway, since I don't
know Norwegian). It's not about English pronunciations. Tell the Japanese,
who say [4osandzerMsM] (L.A.), or [herMSinki] (Helsinki, approximately),
and, like Henrik pointed out, get referred to as Japan, Geppun, Rìběn, Ilbon
all over the world but not Nihon. Or should we get around to talking about
Ellada and Bharat, or Misr?

Eugene

On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 11:17 PM, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>wrote:

> Hi!
>
> Mark J. Reed writes:
> > On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 8:28 AM, Lars Finsen <lars.finsen@...>
> wrote:
> >> At least, what's wrong with trying to imitate a reasonably correct
> >> pronunciation of Milano and Torino for example?
> >
> > Well, that's a case where the names are older than the language
> > currently spoken there.  Milan and Turin come down to us from Latin,
> >...
>
> The German name for Milano is quite interesting: Mailand.  The /i:/
> was sound shifted regularly to /aI)/ and the -lan(us) was interpreted
> as -land.  I like this kind of stuff.  I also like it when languages
> have own names for places (even if they are derived from the original
> language, they are still a different language).
>
> Bilingual places usually have different names in the local languages
> for the same place, so I see no reason at all how it can be judged
> unrespectful to use some or another pronunciation or name for a place
> if that happens to be the usual pronunciation/name.
> E.g.:
>
>    Helsinki vs. Helsingfors
>    Lefkosia vs. Lefkos,a    (Nikosia)
>    ...
>
> And in Hanzi-using languages, the names differ because the reading
> is different, which I also like a lot, e.g. Tokyo vs. Dongjing.
>
> Ok, some are clearly misinterpretations (like Séoul in French, which
> is /sOul/ (or maybe /sVul/) in Korean, with /O/ romanised as _eo_,
> confusing the French (and many Germans, too, btw) if another _u_
> follows), but still, that's the unmarked, native pronunciation in
> French, so it's not unrespectful to use it.
>
> **Henrik
>

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