送交者: omnipotent 于 2006-2-07, 11:09:32:
Here's some excerpts from wikipedia.org (url:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peking)
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The traditional customary name for Beijing in English is Peking. The term originated with French missionaries four hundred years ago, and corresponds to an older pronunciation predating a subsequent sound change in Mandarin from [kʲ] to [tɕ]. ([tɕ] is represented in pinyin as j, as in Beijing.)
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Two insteresting points:
1. The French missionary coined the term "Peking" originally 400 years ago.
2. At that time "京" is pronounced as "King" and later on changed to "Jing" (Sound change). This answers a question that many have raised.
I have no way of validating this though.