>> looked more like JER-MAN-EEE
>
> Oh, you mean "Deutschland" ?

Super Alice?

Or, for New Zealanders -

        "Auckland, Auckland U...."

> I've never quite figured out how there can be that much 
> difference
> between what a country calls itself and what everyone else 
> calls it.
> I mean, maybe in the long-ago politically-incorrect past, 
> but if
> China (another one!) or India can change the names of 
> their major
> cities more or less at will, why can't there be ONE 
> pronounciation
> for each country (local mangling aside, and alphabet 
> conversion
> allowed...)

Ignoring the fact that countries like India and China are 
essentially a vast number of countries ... .

China apparently changed the alphabet and phonetic systems 
for the 'Romanji' [tm][Jp] versions of its names some while 
ago. The language suddenly sprouted X's and Q's and more. 
The trouble is that they use phonetics for the English 
transliterations that in many cases bear only an approximate 
relationship to what I expect them to sound like.

Mr 'Zhou' is Mr Joe. As they have the sound and are 
borrowing our alphabet, why not use a J? [Yeah, I know the 
linguists will explain why it 'must' be so].[A linguist 
friend who spent decades in darkest PNG once explained what 
goes into such processes. Hand coding in assembler is far 
more attractive].

In eg Beijing/Peking, having a map can be useful as long as 
you can read it yourself using the general shapes and names 
of major features as navigation aids. If you are reduced to 
trying to match street names on maps with those on road 
signs, give up and look for a subway. Not only do the 
English street signpost names not match the map street names 
but the Chinese script one don't either. So no amount of 
staring at the hieroglyphs (Chinese version) allowed me to 
translate a sign into its map equivalent or vice versa.

If I showed a map to a taxi driver or to the resident of a 
house or shop they would point out where I was. On no 
occasion did what they showed me match what later turned out 
to be reality. A resident and a taxi driver at the same 
address confidently showed me different map locations, 
neither of which was correct.

At the factory where I was working, nobody, including the 
driver Mr Yuan (who I renamed Mr RMB and that became his new 
name to everyone's amusement) could show me on a map where 
the factory was located. Not even close - not within say 10 
km.

I finally unpacked a GPS unit I had brought with me and 
logged the Hotel Factory route. Wikimapia showed an empty 
site where the factory now stands but it's clearly the 
correct place.

Do not expect (unless a linguistic sponge) to be able to say 
chinese place names in a manner which can be under stood. Or 
the names of famous people. Even after you swap from Mao Tse 
Tund to Mao Zhe Dong (or thereabouts) and say it 10 times 
after your host, don't expect them to understand you. Chiang 
Kai Shek is not what he's called (if he ever gets 
mentioned). And the great father of moder China San Yat Sen 
is also someone else.

I can now say "Long Fu Da Sha" well enough to have half a 
chance of the taxi driver understanding me on the 10th try. 
Spit out the Da Sha in what seems to be a comic and over 
emphasised manner and it seems to work. That's the posh 
extablishment in front of the access way to my budget 2* 
retreat. Once there you force the taxi driver into the 
bowels of the back streets and he responds incredulously as 
the ferengi takes him 100m+ down narrowing lanes and rubble 
littered byways to an obscurely positioned but superb value 
for money hotel only 5 minutes bicycle ride from central 
Beijing. Must remember how to say ... Da Sha .... . :-)



        Russell


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