Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc.

I would consider Hi'roshima to be more "correct" than ,Hiro'shima, given
that the Japanese is actually Hiroshi'ma, with the apostrophe representing
the Japanese accent, which is a drop in pitch. Add to that the Tokyo
dialect's rule that the first two syllables must be contrasting in pitch, we
have low-high-high-low for Hiroshima. Of course, the local Hiroshima dialect
pronounces the name Hi'roshima (high-low-low-low as typical of many urban
dialects in western Japan), but that doesn't figure, does it? ;)
I'm ashamed to say I used to be guilty of A.T-ing, until I realised with a
start one day how entirely pretentious and annoying I sounded. I used to
actually believe that all things should be pronounced as natively as
possible, but I've since woken up and realised why there are such concepts
as "different languages" in the first place. (:

Eugene

On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 1:17 AM, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 12:32 PM, Eugene Oh <un.doing@...> wrote:
> >  Hi'roshima is obviously an Anglicised stress pattern
>
> One that is promulgated as the "correct" pronunciation, in contrast
> with ,Hiro'shima.
>
> > I find the habit of many people to
> > pronounce English perfectly then suddenly say "Beijing" exactly as in
> > Mandarin rather disconcerting, particularly on the news networks.
>
> I call that "Alex Trebekking", and I agree that it's disconcerting.  I
> believe that if you're speaking English, you should pronounce things
> Englishly.  Don't show off your mad language skillz by ordering a
> [bur:'ito] instead of a [br\='i4oU] at Taco Bell, unless you're
> placing the entire order in Spanish...
>
> --
> Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
>

Reply