I must be feeling crotchety today. Why do people pronounce every foreign language as though it were French (or, at least, how they imagine French is pronounced) and capitalize English words as though they were German?
Example: the “j” in Beijing, the capital of China, is pronounced “dzh” not “zh”. There’s a complication in that aspiration is phonemic in Chinese but not in English and in ordinary English initial dental, labial, and palatal consonants are aspirated. But you can avoid it if you pay attention to what you’re doing.
In English the names of persons, places, the names of companies or institutions, e.g. “the Fed”, are capitalized but not much else. In German the rule of thumb is that, if it can have an article in front of it, capitalize it. That’s a bit over-general but, if you follow that rule, you won’t go far wrong. Lately I’ve been reading all sorts of articles, blog posts, and so on in which ordinary English nouns are being capitalized. I’ve seen “unemployment” capitalized.
While I’m at it why do people think that every terminal “s” is treated as a plural? The possessive of “Roberts” is “Roberts’s” not “Roberts’”.
Well, Dave, I agree With you their as I, to, am a Grammer purist.
You’ve brought up an interesting point, Andy. The pronoun “I” is capitalized regardless of where it is in the sentence. Other pronouns are not including “my” or “me” which seems odd. I’m guessing that the reason is typographical.
Capitalization isn’t grammatical but orthographical. As is my example with the possessive, actually. Maybe somewhere in between.
My other complaint isn’t about orthography but about provincialism and feigned worldliness. I hold a heterodox view on that: I think we should just use the conventional English words for place names rather than botching their foreign language pronunciations in a vain attempt to appear to be more sophisticated than we really are. Paris, Moscow, Peking, Bombay are all fine.
@Dave Schuler
I was wondering about that myself. When did “Peking” become an obscure way of referring to China’s capital, in favor of the butchered “Beijing”? Was the Chinese government pushing for it, or something?
What makes it weirder is that we only do it for a handful of cities. We don’t call Germany “Deutschland”, or Mexico City “Ciudad de Mexico/Distrito Federal”.
My minor kvetch about the mispronunciation of the second consonant in Beijing is only the tip of the iceberg. The first syllable is pronounced with a rising-falling tone and the second syllable with a high-level tone. The first consonant isn’t actually the English “b”. It’s an unaspirated labial stop, something that’s in free variation in English, i.e. we can say it but it’s not phonemic.
Mangling the pronunciations of foreign place names is IMO an affectation. We also don’t say “Pahree”, “Moskva”, “Roma”, or “Praha”, just to name a few. It’s also political, a misplaced attempt at currying favor.
“Beijing” means “north capital” in Mandarin. “Peking” is south China dialect.
Just a word of warning if you ever visit “Versailles” Ohio – it’s not pronounced anything like the French.
I agree about “Moskva” etc. as well. It’s fun to take that to the extreme though – for example, I used to live in Saint Tony, Texas and the capital of Rich Port is Saint John.
Another example of the same phenomenon. St. Louis has a lot of street and place names that are French. However, the French they’re pronounced in isn’t modern Parisian French. It’s an idiosyncratic sort of anglicized 18th century southern French.
Or here in Chicago the name of the suburban town Des Plaines is clearly French but it’s pronounced pretty much the way it’s spelled: “dess plains”. Furthermore the street Devon isn’t pronounced like the English county but is pronounced “duh VON”, which may be an example of the propensity to pronounce every foreign word as though it were French.
While I’m at it why do people think that every terminal “s†is treated as a plural? The possessive of “Roberts†is “Roberts’s†not “Roberts’â€.
In grad school I was taught to write the possessive as Roberts’. The push was toward greater simplification and clarity in how students of the humanities write.
Dave and Andy,
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“Chavez” is usually frenchified in pronunciation. As far as capitalization is concerned, reading the Declaration of Independence must drive you crazy!
When in doubt, alway’s u’se the apo’strophe.