tin_the_fatty weblog

For some strange reasons, name changes of cities all tend to get worse. Quoting the Wikipedia on the city of Seoul, captial of the Republic of Korea:-

For people who use the Chinese language, the city has been known as 漢城 (read as Hancheng in Chinese, Hanseong in Korean). However, after months of discussion and debate, the Seoul Metropolitan Government officially announced on January 18, 2005 that the Chinese name of the city shall be Shou’er (首爾), which is a close transliteration of Seoul, where “shou” can also mean “first, capital”. The new name will be used for all official government websites and publications in Chinese, instead of Hancheng/Hanseong which could be interpreted as “Chinese city.” The Government of Seoul has also asked the Chinese Government to use the new name, though it is unlikely that the Chinese-speaking populations would stop using Hancheng right away. The reaction throughout China and the Chinese community in Seoul of the name change has been mostly negative.

The fact that Korean is a non-tonal language may explain the reason behind the poor transliteration. Notice most of the city names in Chinese are of hard tones, because names w/ hard/strong tones sound better, yet “Shou Er” is composed of two soft tone voices. The Chinese language has over the years absorbed much foreign influence, but I say this is a polution of the Chinese language.