On Sunday 25 November 2001 20:29, Lars Aronsson wrote:
There is a current trend in the English speaking world to be overly
politically correct in the spelling of foreign names. Not only
Beijing and Kampuchea, but also Göteborg, Hannover, Köln, and Wien
start to appear in English texts. This is a pity, because Gothenburg,
Hanover, Cologne, and Vienna are well-established words of the English
language since centuries. And I find it unlikely that anybody would
write Sverige, Deutschland, or Österreich in an English text anyway.
I agree in principle, but Beijing actually is not a good example. It
reflects the way the place's name is pronounced in the official dialect of
Chinese. Peking OTOH is a pronounciation based on an out-of-the-way
dialect where some missionary first wrote down "Chinese" words in the
Roman alphabet. It's as if the only Swedish a foreigner could learn was
the way it was pronounced by the Finns, I guess <g>
--
Michel Clasquin, D Litt et Phil (Unisa)
clasqm(a)mweb.co.za/unisa.ac.za
http://www.geocities.com/clasqm
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