Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc.
| From: | Eric Christopherson <rakko@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, August 19, 2008, 5:31 |
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On Aug 18, 2008, at 2:44 PM, Henrik Theiling wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Mark J. Reed writes:
>> To go back to the subject in the header for a second - am I correct
>> that at the time of the creation of the romanization "Peking", the
>> name was actually pronounced [pe'k_jiN], but then the
>> diphthongalization and palatalization went further and now we have
>> [pej'ts\iN] ?
>
> I forgot to mention: the stress on the second syllable is probably due
> to misinterpretation of the Mandarin tones. Both syllables are
> stressed in Mandarin, but higher pitch on the second might indicate
> stress to speakers of whatever other language.
In English at least it seems to be very common to stress the last
syllable of names taken from Chinese and other languages will mostly
monosyllabic morphemes. To me it feels like each syllable is
perceived as a separate word for purposes of stress, and I think
often the last word in a multi-word name is stressed. (It definitely
feels that way if the syllables have hyphens between them.)
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