Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc.

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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