Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc.

Lars Finsen wrote:

> I think I could tell you, too, without offending, that between
> ourselves, we foreigners sometimes have our own laughs at the ways in
> which you English-speakers pronounce our names. I think it's like I
> said, that you are handicapped due to the difference in phonetics, and
> that carelessness isn't that much a part of it. Your ['azloU] is rather
> a lot more different from the local pronunciation of Oslo than what you
> find in most other languages. (In fact the local pronunciation is more
> like ['u²Slu] - if I can use a "²" for toneme 2. A retracted s before l
> is the norm in the east, where Oslo is situated.) But it is noticeable
> that Britons tend to do better with European names than Americans do,
> and the other way around with Asian names for example. Europeans in
> general often do well in pronouncing each others' names, but have
> problems with Chinese or Australian native names, for example.
Thanks for the example. Ušlu would work in both Tirelat ['uSlu] and
Minza ['us`lu], although Tirelat might assimilate the l to a voiceless
fricative (Ušłu). I think this is one of many examples where the English
name of a city differs from its local name (e.g., Munich vs. München,
Naples vs. Napoli), only in this case, they happen to be spelled the
same. :-)

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