tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6797838744936664678.post2706324563550924520..comments2023-07-22T16:31:17.425+08:00Comments on The Theory of Everything: A Note to the Announcers...Bai Hai Feng (AKA: Bruce)http://www.blogger.com/profile/10196532289073702992noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6797838744936664678.post-85776553901672965042008-08-10T04:34:00.000+08:002008-08-10T04:34:00.000+08:00You are right; a lot of the older transliterations...You are right; a lot of the older transliterations of Chinese names into English are based on place names from southern Chinese dialects such as Cantonese. That's where we get names like Peking, Nanking, Chungking, Yangtze, Sun Yat-Sen, etc, the reason being that Canton and a select few non-Mandarin-speaking cities were the first treaty ports where foreigners were allowed to interact with Chinese. <BR/><BR/>I suppose the emperors, and their mandarins, have only themselves to blame if the rest of the world doesn't know the proper Mandarin Chinese place names. <BR/><BR/>I will stay as far as I can from the Beijing games. It is/will be a circus, and I was never a big sports fan to begin with.Bai Hai Feng (AKA: Bruce)https://www.blogger.com/profile/10196532289073702992noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6797838744936664678.post-22859135071866257222008-08-06T13:49:00.000+08:002008-08-06T13:49:00.000+08:00Hey Bruce, how are the days leading up to the olym...Hey Bruce, how are the days leading up to the olympics? Will you be able to go see it?<BR/>I always wondered why Beijing is called Pekin in Japanese, so I looked it up, and it sapposedly comes from a southern China dialect that pronounces it Pekin. Know anything about it?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com