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Comment by natch | Hacker News Reader

OK you pronounce "Bejing" with a normal, regular, everyday hard 'j' sound as it's supposed to be pronounced (not some fake exotic sounding airy zzzhhhhhh sound you and everyone else just made up out of thin air) and I promise not to kill or pin any butterflies.

I really thought the peeve was going to be about pictures of butterflies on people's mouths (Silence of the Lambs). That bugs me, but I guess with the movie it was supposed to.

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Do you want it pronounced like "edging" or "aging"?

Do you pronounce those differently? Where'd you grow up? In all the English dialects I'm familiar with, those are pronounced the same.

Regardless, it's the "j sound" of "James" (as well as of both "edging" and "aging" for those of you who pronounce them the same) and not the "j sound" of "Jaques" (or the "z" sound of "azure").

(For those familiar with IPA, /be.'dʒiɲ/ not /be.'ʒiɲ/)

If you really want to get pedantic, it should be an unaspirated "ch" (as opposed to q, which is aspirated like "ch" usually is in English). And if you want to get even more pedantic, it's a dual-articulated sound and not a pure postalveolar sound like in English.

That is, IPA [t͡ɕ]

Edit: And if anyone's curious, there are four sounds in Mandarin that English-speakers will interpret as forms of "ch", varying based on aspiration and point(s) of articulation. In Pinyin, all four have distinct romanizations (which is one advantage Pinyin has over Wade-Giles).

    Pinyin  IPA  Articulation           Aspirated
    ch      [ʈ͡ʂʰ] postalveolar retroflex  Y
    zh      [ʈ͡ʂ] postalveolar retroflex  N
    q       [t͡ɕʰ] dual alveolo-palatal    Y
    j       [t͡ɕ] dual alveolo-palatal    N

By contrast, English "ch" is postalveolar but not retroflex, and aspiration depends on context: IPA [t͡ʃʰ] or [t͡ʃ].

Am I correct in my recollection that the sound represented by "b" is actually closer to the unaspirated "p" in words like "spin" and "spot"?

Indeed you are.

I think he is referring to the "e" not the "j".

I don't know IPA but BAY-jing (aging) vs BEH-jing (edging).

Well then there's the intonation, so let's call it bay-JING (likewise not IPA, just some characters on the screen).

The ei sounds like a long a, so it's closer to aging.

It was a MOTH! DEATH'S HEAD MOTH! A MOTH! NOT A BUTTERFLY GAAAH! DIDUEVNSEESOTL???? :)

Lol good point. Nicely peeved out, well done.

I know right? ...mildly surprised someone hasn't pointed out it was a Hawkmoth. Have a picture of a dead one (apparently)

http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/wm/live/1280_640/images/l...

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