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Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc.

From:Ollock Ackeop <ollock@...>
Date:Friday, August 22, 2008, 1:04
On Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:53:20 +0200, Lars Finsen <lars.finsen@...> wrote:

>Den 20. aug. 2008 kl. 16.07 skreiv David McCann: > >> This seems a very Anglo-Saxon thing. I've got a German book on the >> shelves nearby that consistently uses Libau, Dünaburg, Wenden, etc >> for >> Liep&#257;ja, Daugavpils, and C&#275;sis (Latvia) and I'm sure it's authors >> didn't >> feel guilty. > >Well, the Germans perhaps are even more notorious than the English >for having their own names for everything. 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.
ISTR once seeing a short German quote where China was "Mittelreich". Sadly, after not finding it in a dictionary, I suspect it was only an artistic name like "The Middle Kingdom". On Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:42:20 +0100, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:
>This is all just silly. Please, francophones, continue calling my >capital city 'Londres', and you, hispanophones, carry on with your >'Londra'. Respect your languages and keep a sense a history!
I was actually taught that the Spanish was "Londres" (pronounced /lOnd4Es/). You might get [lOndrE] or [lOndrEh] from certain speakers, though. On Thu, 21 Aug 2008 10:59:55 -0400, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:
>On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 10:39 AM, Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...> wrote: >> I don't object when English speakers pronounce my >> surname ['dZAns@n] or ['dZQns@n], but I always >> pronounce it ['juns:on] myself, because that's who >> I am. > >Sure, but if you lived in an English-speaking area, would you continue >that practice? It's all about the degree of integration. As a >foreign traveller I don't mind being [ma`r\k r\i:d] whatever the >language, but if I were living in a Spanish-speaking country I'm >pretty sure I'd start calling myself [ma4kos r:iD_}] eventually. > >-- >Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
Spanish isn't the best example. Many Spanish speakers will keep most English names intact. I figure I'd usually be [(d)ZOrdZ kOrli]* to them -- not a terribly difficult name for Latin American Spanish -- unless someone decided to be cute and call me Jorgito (which I probably wouldn't mind in the least). However, in Chinese, I am [k@_55 ts\_hjau_35 ts\`r\`=_14] (until I get a better nickname, of course), not only because of phonological and orthographic requirements, but also because of a pre-existing tradition of Chinese and Westerners choosing new names (or adapting their names) when communicating in the other's language. And, for the record, I do, in fact, usually pronounce Beijing as [bei_25 dz\i(@)N_55] in English (yes, with the tones) -- just out of my natural OCD habit of using native pronunciations when they are fairly close to the accepted English pronunciation (I don't do it for Mexico -- that's too much distance -- but many of the food loanwords I'll do, like [xalapEJO] and [kesaDiZa].) Note -- this was supposed to be part of my last post. But it's probably better divided. *my real name = George Corley

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Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>