early city name romanizations
I thought this would be funny. When I first heard the name "Canton" I heard it in English and I was really confused as to where that particular pronunciation came from. I read up on it and it appears it's from either French or Portuguese missionaries having transliterated the name from Cantonese somewhere between the 16th century to mid-17th century. I didn't really find reliable information on it. But, since I have a French accent highly reminiscent of mid-17th century northern France I thought I would read the city names from that romanization, well because I think it would sound funny more than anything. There were a lot of different accents in France at the time so this isn't necessarily how it would have been meant to be read since my accent has different intonations than the accents of the south.#~;k mFA k!mG V1z&A
I only know of "Canton" and "Pékin" being romanized like this, but if I find out more I could add them too. Also, a note about "Pékin": if it is French I assume that the modern spelling would be "Pékine" and that's how I read it.
Enjoy.
回复 #1 maebus 的帖子
::z2 ::11 my papa is from Canton Thank u for sharing~~~~~~~~~::80 ::80 ::11 ::16回复 #1 maebus 的帖子
where did u find that???BTW?::11 I came across this information on Wikipedia one day when I was wondering about it. Hehe, I had never thought to read it in an older French accent before that although, since they came from Cantonese, I don't think anything like my accent is the one they were intended to be read in. never heard of that before...回复 #6 mouyp 的帖子
::z2 Canton is Guangzhou in Cantonese::z2回复 #7 yupjessie 的帖子
Well, to be more specific 'Canton' comes from 'Guangdong' and Canton City is Guangzhou.It's usage is like the situation with New York City where the 'City' part gets dropped if it's clear that the city was meant and not the state.
回复 #8 maebus 的帖子
::z2 ::z2 yup...Canadian guy.::16 Wow, I never thought this site would be patronized by an international guest. Anyways, I assume you are from francophone Canada? I learned French for two years before in college and loved how classy this language sounds. But now it is so rusty... Really want to pick it up some time soon. Anyways, sorry for digressing from your topic on Canton. Digression is fine. A lot of things go off topic around here.Yup, I'm from a French region of Nova Scotia. I speak Acadian French, the 2nd largest dialect of French in Canada (of three), although over the last century or so it has become diluted with Canadian French (1st largest) and English. All of the dialects of French in Canada sound very different from the French in France. We kept more or less the 17th century form whereas they went through language reform in France. France definitely has the more elegant sounding French. They speak further back in the throat than us and the way they talk sounds like it could put me to sleep. I like northern French accents myself because they sound most like my own.
How much French does one learn from a two year course? I would suppose it would be quite a bit different from the first two years I spent learning French in school. The only class that was taught in English was English and that only started in grade 3.
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