Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc.

Mark J. Reed wrote:
> quoting me:
>>
>> Sorry, what does it signify that initial comma there?
>
> Secondary stress.  That is, the stress pattern is the same as if it
> were the two words 'hiro 'shima, but with the stress in the second
> "word" more pronounced.
Thanks. I don't think I'll ever learn all those phonetic codes...but
I find it actually more effective to ask someone than looking them up
again and again.

>> Careless pronunciation of foreign words feels disrespectful
>> somehow, and from my point of view I find the degradation of a
>> perfectly fine word like burrito kind of disconcerting.
>
> It's not necessarily "careless", and Anglicization is not
> "degradation".  Please avoid such loaded terms.
Hard to avoid when you are kind of disconcerted...

> Loanwords - and place names that are sufficiently well-known to be
> essentially loanwords - get adapted to the phonology of the lessee
> language.  English is hardly unique in this, although we do have an
> excess of loanwords and the whole "ginormous population largely
> isolated from contact with other languages" thing exaggerating the
> effect.
That's a good point, and I think the substantial differences between
the phonetics of English and those of most other languages add to it
as well. To a foreigner it does convey the impression of an attitude
like the Winston Churchill "Foreign names were made for Englishmen,
not Englishmen for foreign names" thing, and I wouldn't be surprised
if there's some of that stuff still lingering on as well, on a more
or less conscious level. At least, what's wrong with trying to
imitate a reasonably correct pronunciation of Milano and Torino for
example? That shouldn't be so difficult. Tradition is the only reason
not to. If a Hispanic TV presenter actually is bilingual, I think it
must feel the most natural for him to pronounce his name the way it
was given to him, and if he does it for any conscious reason at all,
it's for a matter of ethnic pride, not to raise laughs, for sure.

Anyway, I'm not trying to put you or the cultures and traditions of
the whole English-speaking world down. You belong up there. I just
thought it couldn't hurt if I told you, as a friend, how this
attitude to foreign names comes across to the outside - especially as
there are so many here now defending it.

I think I could tell you, too, without offending, that between
ourselves, we foreigners sometimes have our own laughs at the ways in
which you English-speakers pronounce our names. I think it's like I
said, that you are handicapped due to the difference in phonetics,
and that carelessness isn't that much a part of it. Your ['azloU] is
rather a lot more different from the local pronunciation of Oslo than
what you find in most other languages. (In fact the local
pronunciation is more like ['u²Slu] - if I can use a "²" for toneme
2. A retracted s before l is the norm in the east, where Oslo is
situated.) But it is noticeable that Britons tend to do better with
European names than Americans do, and the other way around with Asian
names for example. Europeans in general often do well in pronouncing
each others' names, but have problems with Chinese or Australian
native names, for example.

> Now, there are cases where the standard English name is very different
> from the native one, and it might eliminate some confusion if we
> adopted the latter - the whole Georgia (country) vs Georgia (US state)
> thing comes to mind.  But even there, if we did adopt the native name,
> it'd still be Anglicized to something like [s@k_ha`r\t'vEloU].
You sure about that E?
Anyhow, I guess Georgia, the country, is known as Georgia in just
about every language in the world.

>> I guess the phonetics of English makes it more difficult to
>> pronounce foreign names than in many other
>> languages.
>
> I don't really think that's true, although I don't have any evidence
> one way or the other.
So it's just the attitude, then?

LEF

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