/zh/ replacing /dzh/?

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:14 AM -0700 9/25/02, Anne Gilbert wrote:
>Fritz:
>
>  > BTW, no one (at least that I have seen) has mentioned the Taj Mahal. TaJ
>or TaZH?
>  > Fritz Juengling
>
>... As for TaJ or TaZH Mahal, I've heard both.
>Anne G

It's not so much that we're allowed to anglicize foreign names, which
as dInIs points out (re Paris, Vienna, Spain, China, etc., we do all
the time), but that we "correct" the standard (English)
pronunciations of names like "Beijing" and "Taj" (with the affricates
that presumably did a pretty good job of representing the original
pronunciation) to the hyper-foreign, Frenchified forms (with the
fricatives) in the vain belief that NOW we're really doing a better
job of it.  I almost always hear and, to be honest say "Taj Mahal"
with a fricative, but I'll get around to reforming that once I've
mastered the affricate on "Beijing".

larry