Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc.

On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 4:53 PM, Lars Finsen <lars.finsen@...> wrote:
> Visiting Germans and Italians for example don't
> have much difficulty producing recognisable pronunciations of Norwegian
> names (also just as an example), but the English, and I guess the French,
> have more problems. But why not at least try? Because you don't need to, I
> guess...
Let's not conflate different things, here.  If I'm visiting Norway, of
course I'm going to try to pronounce everything in the proper
Norwegian manner.  That's not what I'm talking about.

If I'm standing in my office in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, carrying on a
conversation in English, and talking about the recent visit of our
friend from Oslo, I'm going to say ['azloU], because that's how the
name is pronounced in English.   If I say "Our friend from [uslu] was
just in town", I'll get strange looks, and nobody will know what the
heck I'm talking about - except perhaps my Swedish colleague, if she
happens to be in the conversation.  That would be the sort of thing I
refer to as "Trebekking".

It's a simple fact that most Americans, even well-educated Americans
who actually know that Oslo is the capital of Norway, have never heard
the name pronounced in the Norwegian manner - or if they have, they
didn't recognize it as the same name that they know as Oslo.

Similarly, when describing last year's trip to Italy, I mention
Venice, Rome, and Florence - not Venezia, Roma, or Firenze.  The
layover on the flight back was in ['&mstr\=d&m], not [Amst@r'dAm].
And if I'd taken a side trip to see the Eiffel ['aIf5=] Tower, it
would have been in ['pE`r\Is fr&ns], not [p@'Ri fRa~s], although the
latter would likely be understood by more folks over here than the
other examples.

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

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