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

[Benjamin Barrett]

On Feb 5, 2012, at 2:30 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?

I think it's because people think the "zh" pronunciation makes it sound foreign (c.f. French). Mandarin uses the "zh" pronunciation a lot, but it is _not_ a sound found in the word "Beijing."

Benjamin Barrett
Seattle, WA

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