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From: cu216@torfree.net (Allen Kichiji Kabayama)
Subject: Re: Beijing (was: Aachen or Aix)
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Date: Fri, 11 Jul 1997 08:03:47 GMT
Lines: 53

Mikael Thompson (adrianh@owlnet.rice.edu) wrote:
: Rich Clancey wrote:
: > + jandrews@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (James Andrews) writes:
: > + >Yeah, but what I'm still wondering is where they got the "k" when they
: > + >anglicized Beijing.  I mean, the "b" is kind of a hard "b" sound, and I
: > + >guess could be mistaken for a "p," but the "j" sound is really nothing
: > + >like "k."  Any thoughts on that?
It may be a natural first reaction to say that "j" is nothing like "k".  
However, a look at the way a lot of European languages, including 
English, pronounce "c" and "g" before "i" and "e", shows that 
palatization is not rare at all.
: >         According to "Speaking of Chinese" by Chang and Chang, Norton,
: > 1978, it's all a matter of how Western Romanizers interpreted the
: > accents of their Chinese sources.  On page 31 they give the following
: > sources for romanized spellings of "Northern Capital":
: > 
: >         Peking     Wade-Giles
: >         Peiping    Gwoyeu Romantzyh
: >         Beijing    Yale and pinyin.
: > 
Chang and Chang must have been loonies.  THAT is NOT the Wade-Giles 
representation of "Beijing".

:    The question here is somewhat deeper than comparing romanization
: systems, since what is at issue is whether "Peking" was borrowed from
: older Mandarin (in which case the -k- would be a remnant of a sound that
: has since developed in Mandarin into a -j- sound) or from the southern
: dialects (which retain the -k- before -i-).  The second seems likelier
: to me, since the spelling is that adopted by the British post office,
: and the British learned the readings of Chinese characters in the first
: instance in Cantonese (Hong Kong and all that).  However, it is possible
: from what others have written that in fact Peking is a very old
: borrowing into the western languages, from perhaps as long ago as Marco
: Polo, in which case the -k- could well have been the Old Mandarin or
: pre-Mandarin sound.
I agree completely.  "Beijing" in Cantonese would be "Bak-ging", not far 
from "Peking" at all.

By the way, I learned Mandarin using pinyin, so it is the romanization 
scheme with which I am most familiar.  I have also studied linguistics, 
so I understand the way in which the root vowels of a syllable are 
environmentally conditioned by the choice of initial consonant, optional 
semivowel, and ending.  However I disagree that Yale is only easier than 
pinyin for English speakers.  In the languages with which I am familiar and 
which also use the Latin alphabet, "x" is used for [gz] or [x], and "q" 
is used for [k] or [q].  Note also, that as far as I know, Yale uses 
similar representations for the vowels, so it still would not be easy for 
an English-speaker.

--Allen.
-- 
---
Allen K. Kabayama                        E: cu216@freenet.toronto.on.ca
