manising Mandarin to the old Wade-Giles system, and probably Beijing is nearer to Mandarin pronunciation than Peking – but so what? Peking happens to be far more mellifluous that the ugly Beijing (even more so Canton over Guanghzhou), and it’s what we’ve called the Chinese capital for years, with all the historical accretions to the name that that implies. We don’t worry that what we call Florence is Firenze to Italians, or that Munich is Munchen to Germans. So why have we been bullied into dropping Peking?
Peking
Written by
in
Comments
-
This is similar to the way Americans have been bullied into pronouncing Spanish names with a faux spanish accent. No one says “Paree”, just Paris. But for some reason, “Salvador” is pronounced with a preposterously long rolling “r” at the end. It’s getting to the point where even American cities, like San Francisco, are getting spanish sounding, as though we owe it to hispanics.
-
“This is similar to the way Americans have been bullied into pronouncing Spanish names with a faux spanish accent.”
During the 80s there was a shibboleth amongst certain members of the left who supported Daniel Ortega et al. to pronounce “Nicaragua” something like “Nee-ka-ra-wah” in a faux Spanish accent. This was meant to demonstrate their solidarity with the Sandinistas. They obviously forgot that the Contras pronounced it exactly the same way. -
It makes no more sense for a news reader here to say Beijing than it would for them to say Nueva York. Less, as there’s a hell of a lot more Spanish speakers here than Chinese.
Leave a Reply