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Relying on better pronunciation of non-Chinese speakers as a form of romanization for Chinese speakers is not a good idea. Does anyone remember when Beijing wa
by turtlebits 8y ago
Relying on better pronunciation of non-Chinese speakers as a form of romanization for Chinese speakers is not a good idea.
Does anyone remember when Beijing was Peking?
And I don't think Taiwan had an official romanization system, Wade giles seems more prevalent, and the road signs now are still a laughable mess.
- nerdponx 8y agoMaybe not a good idea in general, but it seems perfectly reasonable for naming your restaurant.
- geowwy 8y ago>And I don't think Taiwan had an official romanization system They had a few but never used any of them consistently, hence the mess.
- jhanschoo 8y agoActually, Bei = Pe, in another form of romanization. "B" in Hanyu Pinyin is an unaspirated "p". In addition, "j" was indeed a "k"-like sound in the past. Mandarin Chinese underwent a linguistic process called palatalization, which softens "k"-like sounds; the same process has Italian pronounce "k" sounds as "tch", and, to a further extreme, has English and French pronounce them as "s".
- zhte415 8y agoPeking, the spelling, 'Pe', well 'Pek' with a glottal stop on the 'k' comes from Cantonese from over a century ago.
- ksec 8y ago>Does anyone remember when Beijing was Peking? The name Peking came from Cantonese.