Why pick a non-English based spelling system for your country

[Benjamin Barrett]

On Feb 5, 2012, at 5:11 PM, Barbara Need wrote:

> On 5 Feb 2012, at 5:30 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Feb 5, 2012 at 4:05 PM, Tom Zurinskas <truespel at hotmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Why should other countries pick a non-Latin (English-friendly)
>>> alphabet, when Englsh is the lingua franca of the world?
>>
>> Perhaps because it doesn't even work for native-speakers of English,
>> since they ignore it.
>>
>> It's spelled "Bei_ j _ing." Yet, the preferred pronunciation is as
>> though the spelling was "Bei_ zh _ing"!
>>
>> Why?
>
> And the same pronunciation was earlier spelled Peiking˜which we
> pronounce with aspirated stops!

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_(name), where it explains that the Peking pronunciation comes from an older pronunciation (and the Fujianese pronunciation), just like the "s" in "Paris."

Benjamin Barrett
Seattle, WA

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