Like every one else, ever since the Olympic Games started on August 8, my eyes were constantly glued to the TV to watch some of my favourite sports. I found that the narrators/presenters of the local Chinese channels (TVB Jade and ATV) just talked too much drivel, and they surely didn't know what they were talking about and were simply making noises. So I tried the English channel (TVB Pearl) and got the impression that the "gwai lo" (foreign) presenters were much more professional and knew about their sports, so I stuck with the English channel. However, every time one of the presenter guys who speaks with an American accent mentioned "Bejing", I frowned, because he keeps saying "Bei-SHING", instead of Bei-JING! Now, it wasn't the first time I'd heard people pronouncing it that way, and I don't normally think much about it, but coming from a professional TV presenter is just a bit ridiculous and inexcusable because it's misleading, people who have been saying it right might now think that this idiot's version is correct.
The word "Beijing" is the English name for the Capital of China, it is actually the phonetic transcription from the Chinese pronunciation, because in Chinese, it is also pronounced exactly "Bei-Jing". (Two separate characters in writing which means "the capital situated in the north") The way this guy said it like a bloody French word or something, and there is no need to be smart about it when it's so obvious how it should be pronounced, why be creative with a city name when there is already an universal way of pronouncing it!??
I know with some country / city names, they can be difficult to pronounce, like some of the Welsh words, or some other Chinese places such as "Shanghai". Because in English, it's just one word, some people say "ShanGAI" instead of "Shang - Hai". I can tell you that it should be latter, because in Chinese, it is again two different words, and pronounced as "Shang - Hai". but to me, this is a mistake that is easily made, as in general, you just don't normally pronounce the "H" that comes after letter "G" in a vocabulary. That's totally understandable if you're not a Chinese speaker, and I'm happy with both ways of saying it.
It's just that if I was a presenter, hosting an important show/programme like the Olympic games, I would at least look up the dictionary and make sure that I know my country names, the sports terms and try my best with the names of the participants.
