On Sunday 25 November 2001 20:29, Lars Aronsson wrote:
There is a current trend in the English speaking world to be overly politically correct in the spelling of foreign names. Not only Beijing and Kampuchea, but also Göteborg, Hannover, Köln, and Wien start to appear in English texts. This is a pity, because Gothenburg, Hanover, Cologne, and Vienna are well-established words of the English language since centuries. And I find it unlikely that anybody would write Sverige, Deutschland, or Österreich in an English text anyway.
I agree in principle, but Beijing actually is not a good example. It reflects the way the place's name is pronounced in the official dialect of Chinese. Peking OTOH is a pronounciation based on an out-of-the-way dialect where some missionary first wrote down "Chinese" words in the Roman alphabet. It's as if the only Swedish a foreigner could learn was the way it was pronounced by the Finns, I guess <g>