You know what’s bugging me about the TV coverage of these Olympics already? It’s the mispronunciation of the word Beijing.
I’m hearing this constant Bei-shing. Now, I don’t know where this came from originally… but it’s wrong.
I don’t want to sound like a smarty here, but I learned Chinese in Beijing, from a Beijinger - and they teach you to pronounce it: Bei - Jing.
Locals who speak too fast end up blurting out pay-cheeng. A ‘ch’ on the ‘J’, but it can never be ‘shing’ because that sound in Mandarin, is spelt x-i-n-g.
And ‘xing’ has four meanings in Chinese, depending on what tone you place on the word. It can mean ‘able’, ‘heart’, ‘new’ and ‘wake’.
So forget Bei-shing - it’s Bei-jing. The J is always hard.
There was also some disagreement on this, in the Column 8 section of the Herald last week - the conclusion was: “It’s hard J, but we may be wrong, it’s been known to happen” No! Don’t give up! It’s Bei-jing.
Now of course the city was once Peking, which most of us know.
The city didn’t actually change its name, but Chinese words became spelt in English differently, when the nation became a Republic in 1949. In Chinese, the name stayed exactly the same and most Chinese people are not even aware that some Westerners think that there’s been a name change.
The old spelling was Peking, then the government adopted the pinyin transliteration, which just uses our Romanised/Latin alphabet.
It wasn’t until the 1980s, when Beijing was enforced on flights, sea routes and official documents.
So there’s some background for you, but please, all those reporters whose news directors have not sent out a style pronunciation guide. It’s Beijing!
