Re: Looking for transcription or transliteration standards latin- >arabic

From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Tue Jul 06 2004 - 04:50:04 CDT

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    On 03/07/2004 00:07, Patrick Andries wrote:

    >Jony Rosenne a écrit :
    >
    >
    >
    >>
    >>
    >>
    >>
    >>>-----Original Message-----
    >>>From: unicode-bounce@unicode.org
    >>>[mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org] On Behalf Of John H. Jenkins
    >>>
    >>>
    >>>
    >>>Peking for Beǐjīng. :-)
    >>>
    >>>
    >>>
    >>>
    >>Or Constantinople for Istanbul. :-)
    >>
    >>
    >>
    >Two very different political realities (before and after 1453). Cities
    >change names without going through transliterattions, cf. Berlin
    >(Ontario) becoming Kitchener in 1916.
    >
    >

    But Constantinople -> Istanbul is not in fact this kind of name change,
    for Istanbul (that is, İstanbul) is probably a corrupted and shortened
    version of Constantinople, with the initial I added to fit Turkish
    phonology (cf. the old western version Stamboul, still used in Russian,
    also Smyrna -> Izmir). (I have also heard it said that Istanbul comes
    from Greek EIS TĒN POLIN "to the city", but that seems less likely to
    me.) So the change is more like Beijing -> Peking than Berlin ->
    Kitchener. I guess another similar change would be Danzig -> Gdansk, but
    I don't know where the initial G came from so possibly the Polish form
    is older than the German. 

    -- 
Peter Kirk
peter@qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk@qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/

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