Thanks to Richard Bartle’s post about Beijing pronunciation, it sparked me to make my own comment about something that’s been bothering me since the opening ceremonies.
SAY THE J!
It’s bay jing, not bei zhing!
In America it seems common to make fun of Asian people because they can’t pronounce ‘L’s and ‘R’s properly, but every hour on the news they can’t say the ‘j’!
I don’t understand why this is so hard! Nobody calls me ‘Zhacob,’ why can’t they pronounce Beijing?
Yesterday I went and donated blood with Jeff. This is a regular thing for us. We usually hit the Chinese restaurant afterwards, and this time was no exception. My fortune cookie was terrible, though—the pinyin was all wrong. See, look:
How do they expect people to learn Chinese if the pinyin is off? It should say Xian zai ji dian.
Oh yeah, and don’t steal my lucky numbers, they were for me alone!
Today (at one of the bookstores I visited) I learned about the Google Pinyin program. It lets you type entire phrases quickly in Chinese. And it’s free.