Coupla things

The beautiful settee of Bay-zhing

So this shits me. Beijing, which is the capital of China, and they're having Olympics there soon, is not pronounced Bay-zhing. Or Bay-shing. It is pronounced Bay-jing. The jing is pronounced as in jingle.

I'm right, aren't I? Cireena, if you see this, perhaps you could:

1. confirm, or
2. deny.
   

As far as I'm concerned, the whole issue gets to the core of the value of public broadcasting. The Australian Broadcasting Channel gets it right. Why? Well, it's not because its journalists are ever so slightly brainier than Channel Nine's journos — although they are — but because it has SCOSE. SCOSE is the the Standing Committee on Spoken English, and it has been a part of the ABC, in some form or another, since 1944 — I interviewed the woman who worked there a couple of years ago, she sounded like she'd been there since 1944, she sounded like was happily stuck in a dim but cosy basement surrounded by dusty dictionaries. She makes rulings on how to pronounce certain words, and memos go round to all staff, and the young journos all coo and think them quaint and ignore them. If I was French I'd make a film about her.


Nugget and Crow Boy

Bloggers from the Sunshine Daily News. Deadset legends. Ok, so it's all a bit yesterday now, but check out their take on the 2020 Summit. They thought Warnie should have had a say.