送交者: Erxin 于 2006-2-11, 01:01:35:
Having asked around, I've found almost 10/10 English speaking people pronounce "Peking" as "Pee-king". One person did have a hesitation and gave an alternative choice as "peck-ing", but then quickly said it should be "pee" and "king". Perhaps French people may pronounce it differently?
People seem to have no problem saying Beijing. The confusion is ironically coming from us. At school English teachers tell us there is a difference between 't' and 'd','k' and 'g'. I guess that's why "taibei" is intentionally and "elegantly" spelled as "Taipei".
However, my ears refuse the scholastic explanation. I had a great difficulty in telling the subtle difference btween "study" and "sdudy". It just drives me crazy. My teacher has never explained to me why "study" in fact sounds like "sdudy", school sounds like "sgool". Finally I think I've got the answer. When I show "study" and "sdudy" to English speaking people, they responded: "Man, there is no difference".
I tend to believe the spelling Peking was invented by French. I believe the motivation of most of the people who insist in keeping Peking is to please the western world, especially the English world. But they seem to have ignored two things. One is the generation of our grandparents has long gone. People in the west at their age of 60 or 70 were also young people like most of us back to the 1970s and 1980s. They are familiar with new China and Bejing. Another thing is the the pronunciation of Peking has nothing in common with Beijing. Keeping calling Beijing "pee-king" just does not make any sense.