送交者: xj 于 2006-2-07, 16:11:41:
To sort out the puzzle surrounding the name of Beijing, I talked to an American colleague who is a native English speaker. I asked her two questions:
First, has she ever heard of Peking? Her answer was no. With her instinct, she pronounced “Peking” like “pee-king”, exactly like most people joke about. In fact, in the www.dictionary.com, the Peking is “peeking.”
Then I asked her how to pronounce Beijing. She pronounced it like “Bei(zh)ing”, the j sounds like the s in the “vi(s)ion. ”
Apparently, neither pronunciation is correct in Chinese. I call this language phenomenon “hyperforeignism.”
In English, the “j” is usually pronounced as “g”, for example, jeep, judge etc. Instead of sticking to the common rule, Americans resort to an exotic way of pronunciation, making it like “s” in “vision.” It indeed sounds more foreign.
By writing thus far, a French word comes into my mind, Déjà vu. In this word, e is pronounced as a short “ei”, and “j” as “s” in the “vision.” Now a picture grows clear. Is it possible that Peking was originally pronounced as “peiking? ”
As some people have pointed out, the name of Peking might be coined by French missionaries. It is very likely the “e” in the “Peking” does sound like the e in the “déjà vu.”
The interchange of “p” and “b”, “k” and “j” is very easy to understand. In old days and in some dialects, for example, Cantonese, “P” and “B”, “K” and “J” might sound indistinguishable to those foreigners who entered China through Guangzhou. It is also possible that a sound change from k to j occurs after the Peking was invented.
Therefore, if Peking is an old way and wrong way (in terms of modern pinyin) of pronouncing Beijing, the Peking should be abandoned.