I have to vent, and I know my fellow tea-lovers will empathize...

How hard can it be for American journalists to learn to pronounce the
name of China's capital city? I haven't YET heard anyone covering the
Olympics pronounce it correctly. It's phonetic, for Pete's sake! BEI
JING, not BEI ZHING!

Found this entertaining explanation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GE4dkpOdPw

Thanks. I'll go back to my cup of Lao Cong Shui Xian now. Mmmmmmm...
narcissusy.

Alan

While intrepidly exploring the bowels of USENET on Wednesday, August
13, 2008, Alan rolled initiative and posted the following:

We get the names of teas wrong, too. But we screw up European names,
too. We're particularly bad with anything east of the former Iron
Curtain.

On Aug 13, 7:37 pm, Alan alanandmike.com> wrote:

You are right. However Pinyin is not phonetic English. Cong is
pronounced like tsung. I grew up in the South. I pronounced
breakfast like brefust. My accent got me lots of dates in the
northern college I attended. I couldnt go into teaching because they
thought I had a speech impediment.

Jim

Alan alanandmike.com> writes:

Far be it from me to defend TV news in the USA, but I don't think it's
that simple. Sure, in Pinyin it's spelled Beijing, but the consonant
represented by the J in Beijing just doesn't exist in any dialect of
English I'm familiar with (or, for that matter, any European language
I'm at all familiar with.)

/Lew

According to one college textbook (Integrated Chinese, Tao-chung Yao,
Yuehua Liu et all) "J is an unaspirated voiceless palatal
affricate." (whatever the hell that means). "To produce this sound,
first raise the front of the tongue to the hard palate and press the
tip of the tongue against the back of the lower teeth, and then loose
the tongue and let the air squeeze out throught the channel thus
made. It is unaspirated and the vocal cords do not vibrate. Note
that the Chinese j is similar to English j but unvoiced and
articulated, with the tip of the tongue resting behind the lower
incisors."

Jim, the tongue twister

PS Im going to pay attention to this sound when I see it on CCTV.
You'll see the PinYin scroll when they do names,places,things.

Lewis Perin wrote:

On Aug 14, 7:35 am, Lewis Perin panix.com> wrote:

Space Cowboy ix.netcom.com> writes:

If you're like me, you'll find imitating the CCTV announcer is much
easier than convincing your mouth to follow directions from
phonological jargon.

Its pretty hard carrying around a college text book in Chinatown. I
carry a pocket tourist guide with the pinyin pronunciation guide in
front not because it would help any tourist but a reminder for me who
has already done some homework. The zh sound is almost a giveme from
zhongguo used on CCTV. Of course Beijing is every other word on CCTV
now.

PS I saw a CCTV piece yesterday on gourmet coffee shops in Beijing.
Ironically a respite from the maddening crowds just like I would
expect from a tea shoppe here. Also CCTV is doing some adlib studio
interviews with Chinese culture experts if you think the mass drumming
spectacle was not frightening enough. I cant figure out where they
get the various young 20 something Westerners doing on the street
interviews speaking Chinese when necessary.

Jim

I thought I heard Bob Costas say "BEI JING" last night, but either I
misheard or he accidentally said it more-or-less correctly; he went
back to "bay-zhing" for the rest of the night.

Lew, I've never been able to make sense of the phonological
directions. Even sounds I already know how to make!

Alan