Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc.

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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