It's "Bay-Jing", not "Bay-zhing"

[Anonymous]

You all forget that this city used to be called Peking by the US. They butchered that too by saying pee-king or pay-king. So going back to the real mandarin pronunciation, "Bay Jing" makes it much less confusing as I always thought they were speaking about another city when they brought up Peking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Yes, it is. If you're speaking Persian, you refer to the language you're speaking as Farsi. Just like when you're speaking French, you say, "je parle francais". You do not, however, say "I speak francais". Unless you want to sound like a tool.

I guess my Iranian husband and his friends are all "tools" They call their language Farsi, even when speaking English!

All Iranians/Persians I've known (around 10-15) always referred to their language as Farsi. Some (foreign) words make it into the day-to-day English language. In English, we use the French tete-a-tete, vis-a-vis. The French use the English word "parking" and "weekend" in their daily language. Maybe Farsi has made this leap since the big migration/exodus of Iranians/Persians to the US.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:
Yes, it is. If you're speaking Persian, you refer to the language you're speaking as Farsi. Just like when you're speaking French, you say, "je parle francais". You do not, however, say "I speak francais". Unless you want to sound like a tool.



I guess my Iranian husband and his friends are all "tools" They call their language Farsi, even when speaking English!


All Iranians/Persians I've known (around 10-15) always referred to their language as Farsi. Some (foreign) words make it into the day-to-day English language. In English, we use the French tete-a-tete, vis-a-vis. The French use the English word "parking" and "weekend" in their daily language. Maybe Farsi has made this leap since the big migration/exodus of Iranians/Persians to the US.

My "tool" husband was born in Iran - perhaps that's why he calls it Farsi. Perhaps only American-Born Persians take offense to their language being called Farsi.

[Anonymous]

we only pronounced it Peking because of the way it was originally spelled in ENGLISH. It's how most people thought it was pronounced after seeing it spelled and probably not being near a native speaker of Chinese at the time.

http://geography.about.com/library/faq/blqzpinyin.htm

There's no way that me pronouncing it Bay -JING makes it sound more authentic in English. It's called common parlance, people. Ask 5 native English speakers what they call the capital of China, and see if they say Bey-JING. I doubt it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not sure how related this is but, why do we include "the" when referring to some countries? The Gambia? The Netherlands? We don't say The Canada, The Russia, The South Africa ...

Yes and for some reason we used to say "The Ukraine" and "The Sudan" but now I get the sense that it is not just incorrect but improper to say that these days. Anyone know more and care to comment?

So, I decided to procrastinate a bit and do some research. "The" is used for geographic names in the following circumstances:

- Names of rivers (the Mississippi, the Gambia), mountain ranges (the Alps), island groups (the Bahamas), and regions (the Arctic)
- Place names that are plural in form (the Netherlands)
- Place names that are also general vocabulary terms (the South)
- Place names that are adjective/noun compounds (the Red Sea)

Now... that being said, some people take offense when their country is referred to with "the" in front of it, when it is not a plural term (e.g. "the" Sudan, "the" Gambia, "the" Ukraine). I noted that the official names for these countries / regions are:

- Ukraine
- Republic of The Gambia
- Republic of Sudan

HTH!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:we only pronounced it Peking because of the way it was originally spelled in ENGLISH. It's how most people thought it was pronounced after seeing it spelled and probably not being near a native speaker of Chinese at the time.

http://geography.about.com/library/faq/blqzpinyin.htm

There's no way that me pronouncing it Bay -JING makes it sound more authentic in English. It's called common parlance, people. Ask 5 native English speakers what they call the capital of China, and see if they say Bey-JING. I doubt it.

Maybe Americans and other people around the world will know to say Bay-Jing after these Olympics. Sometimes, you nee primetime coverage to teach something new on a large scale.

I've heard that for some reason, the British could not say Mumbai, so they called it Bombay. Now the name is changed back to Mumbai.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Yes and for some reason we used to say "The Ukraine" and "The Sudan" but now I get the sense that it is not just incorrect but improper to say that these days. Anyone know more and care to comment?

So, I decided to procrastinate a bit and do some research. "The" is used for geographic names in the following circumstances:

- Names of rivers (the Mississippi, the Gambia), mountain ranges (the Alps), island groups (the Bahamas), and regions (the Arctic)
- Place names that are plural in form (the Netherlands)
- Place names that are also general vocabulary terms (the South)
- Place names that are adjective/noun compounds (the Red Sea)

Thanks for checking that out. Interesting!

[zumbamama]

This post is so amusing. you'd be suprised at how many English speakers butcher their own language, let alone foreign languages. My British colleague went on a press check in Kentucky, and they could not understand each other's English!

And BTW, Filipino is spelled with an F, not a Ph...even though the word Philippines does not have an F. And if you are referring to the archipelago in native dialect it is Pilipino. I've seen it written the Spanish way, the English way and the Pilipino way...confusing isn't it?