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Comment by iguy | Hacker News Reader

I presume most new translations now target Mandarin, but I wonder whether some older western imports got their names in Cantonese, is this a thing?

And likewise for candidate names -- IIRC lots of people moved to BC from HK, but perhaps a minority by now?

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> I wonder whether some older western imports got their names in Cantonese, is this a thing?

Yes, it is the norm for older loanwords. Compare Mandarin jia-na-da [Canada] from Cantonese ga-la-da, or Mandarin mo-xi-ge [Mexico] from Cantonese mak-sai-go.

EDIT: it's worth observing that the Chinese themselves are generally not aware that the older loanwords came through Cantonese.

This also applies in the opposite direction for English loanwords of Chinese origin, which are often Cantonese. E.g. bok choy is from 白菜 (white vegetable), which is pronounced baak6 coi3 in Cantonese (Jyutping romanization) but báicài in Mandarin (Pinyin romanization). Note that Mandarin has lost the final -k of the first syllable, which is retained in the loan.

The Cantonese for "Canada" is gaa1 naa4 daai6 in Jyutping transcription (your transcription of "Mexico" is fine though).

I based the Canada on oral communication and the Mexico on textual communication. I've never studied Cantonese.

It feels safe to say the second syllable beginning with N in Mandarin was just good luck though. I might have swapped out the N for L anyway if I had known the Jyutping.

An example of a distinction that would have come through fine English -> Mandarin being lost by apparent transmission through Cantonese exists in Los Angeles, 洛杉矶. The Mandarin is luo-shan-ji, which annoys me every time I need to understand or produce the name. Mandarin has no problem distinguishing s from sh.

I wouldn't affirm Canada transliteration come from Cantonese without serious proof. Not too long ago (about a century [1]), the initial now romanized by <j> was written with <k>. I'm not specialist of the phonetic changes that happen during that time in the involved languages and dialects, but it is totally credible that 加拿大 comes from Mandarin. The initial involved in 加 seems to have change "recently". This also explain the Peking/Beijing thing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFEO_Chinese_transcription

The Peking / Beijing thing is indeed the same thing you see in Canada / jianada. Peking / Nanking / etc. do not come from Mandarin.

Read your own link:

> The transcription of the EFEO did not borrow its phonetics from the national official Standard Mandarin. Rather, it was synthesized independently to be a mean of Chinese dialects, and shows a state of sounds a little older in form

Reading is good, understanding the implications is better. Standard Mandarin is newer than the period at which Canada would appear as a loanword in Chinese, so of course it is not drawn from that language. But that doesn't mean it is Cantonese either. Moreover, I wrote Mandarin (a Chinese languages with a variety of dialects), not Standard Mandarin (the language taught at school).

In particular, for the Beijing case, South Mandarin is involved: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_postal_romanization#Ma....

Mandarin and Cantonese, two of several Chinese dialects, share the same Chinese writing system based on Chinese characters. But the same character is pronounced differently depending on the dialect. So a name can be transliterated in "Cantonese way" or "Mandarin way," yes.

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