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Use vs. reference. 'Peking' is a romanized name for Beijing. So is 'Beijing.' Had the author said "a romanized name for 'Beijing,'" then you would have a had a
by vehemenz 4y ago
Use vs. reference.
'Peking' is a romanized name for Beijing. So is 'Beijing.' Had the author said "a romanized name for 'Beijing,'" then you would have a had a point. Sure, you could use '北京,' but that is unnecessarily confusing.
- mc32 4y agoThat's my point, they're both "romanizations" One is one type, the other another. There have been other romanizations as well and in addition there are things like bopomo. And, yes, it would make sense to me to say Peking is a romanized transliteration of the Chinese character for the locale [in the mandarin dialect.]
- vehemenz 4y agoThe author raises the point about 'Peking' because many people don't know that it's a romanization of Beijing. You are suggesting that the author is incorrect to omit the commonly known romanization? Develop the argument.
- zerocrates 4y agoThey just want it to say "an alternative romanization of Beijing" or something like that instead. As written it sort of implies that "Peking" is the result of romanization while "Beijing" is not.
- jacobr1 4y agoWhile I don't think this was intended - there is a movement to use place-names as preferred by their inhabitants, rather than their "colonial" names. Regardless of the historical context or the merits of linguistic descriptivism. So for example you have Mumbai or Turkiye. So the _implication_ for someone that didn't have the context regarding romanization, is that Peking is the "colonial" name, now requiring updating to less-racist standards.
- mc32 4y agoEh, I rather go by whatever a language one is speaking calls something: For example, are you going to write in to Chinese radio and news outlets and insist they use English names for cities in Anglo north America and Spanish for cities in Latin America? They use phonetically semi-close analogues for major geographical place names[1]. What about Latin American speakers and their translations of US and Canadian cities into Spanish, is that now frowned? And who cares about what a despot says a country should be called (be they Turkey or Burma)? Do I have to say Koln instead of Cologne, Roma/Rome, Espagna/Spain, Torino/Turin? Or Myanmar instead of Burma? But, whait.. what do I do when the locals have a dialectal non-official variant? [1] Alabama (阿拉巴马 – Ā lā bā mǎ) Alaska (阿拉斯加 – Ā lā sī jiā) Arizona (亚利桑那 – Yǎ lì sāng nà) [asia, profit, mulberry, that] Arkansas (阿肯色 – Ā kěn sè) California (加利福尼亚 – Jiā lì fú ní yǎ) Colorado (科罗拉多 – Kē luō lā duō) Connecticut (康涅狄格 – Kāng niè dí gé) [health, nirvana, digger] Delaware (特拉华 – Tè lā huá)
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ponow 4y agoHilarious. I think the criterion is that you have to change your pronunciation if someone claims you have power: a kind of punching up / revenge.
- jacobr1 4y agoThere are plenty of people that will gleefully try to correct you if you write Burma rather than Myanmar these days. I don't think it is a _good_ trend. But it really is a trend.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago> They use phonetically semi-close analogues for major geographical place names[1]. No, just like everyone else, they use whatever their names are without worrying even the slightest bit about whether those names are phonetically close to the native pronunciation. I notice you forgot to list San Francisco.
- vehemenz 4y agoAs it's written, I see zero such implication. The author used the article 'a' instead of 'the.' There's your clue. For a forum that is notoriously literal, I am surprised to see so many people interpret such a straightforward sentence in bad faith.