Re: Myanmar (formerly Burma)

"Richard R. Hershberger" <rrhersh@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

>As for those Latin American places they had established names before
>any Anglophones thought about the question, and Spanish names work
>reasonably well with English phonetics, so they just went with more-or-
>less Spanish.  Compare this with China or Japan, where there were
>established local names but the phonetics did not mess comfortably
>with English, so the result was a seriously butchered version of the
>local name.

Then they rebutchered all the names again a couple of times, trying to
get closer to English speaker's pronunciation.  Thus we have Peiping*,
Peking, and Beijing.  So what *IS* that middle consonant?   

"Cantonese" is the language spoken by the residents of "Guangdong"

Mao Tse Tung became Mao Zedong.  I have no idea how Kung Fu Tsu has
been re-rendered.  (quick wiki:  Kong Fuzi)

A restaurant near where a friend of mine lived was called Chung Qing.
I realized much later that this was named after the city I think of as
Chunking.


-----------------------------------------
*OK, if the question is asked, it must be answered.  Peiping wasn't a
re-butcher, but an actual re-name.  Beijing translates as "Northern
capital", but when the capital was moved a couple of times in the
early twentieth century, the city was renamed "Northern Peace" because
it wasn't the capital anymore.)
-- 
Tomorrow is today already.
Greg Goss, 1989-01-27