I do remember watching a series of TV programmes called The Silk Road in Singapore about 15 years ago. It was a travelogue retracing the route of the Silk Road from China to Constantinople (Konstantinopolis?), later to be called, by English speakers at any rate, Istanbul (I freely admit I do not know how close to the Turkish name that is). Any way, I believe the programmes were actually made in Japanese and then dubbed into English in Singapore. In the first few programmes, which dealt with the Chinese end of the road, all the Chinese place names were given correct Chinese pronunciations -- with tones! With 5 or 6 names to a sentence all semblance to English intonation was lost. But if you're going to insist on Co^te d'Ivoire rather than Ivory Coast why not insist on the correct tonal pronunciation for Beijing?
Bingley
