A lament for the passing of Pekingese (Běijīnghuà 北京话) — for those who don't understand Mandarin, just listen to a bit of what the presenter is saying for the flavor, then skip down to the explanations below the page break to find out what it's all about:
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By now the whole world knows that Osama Bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad. When I first saw this place name, I thought that it was curious in being composed of a British surname followed by a Hindi-Urdu-Persian ending. We may dispense with the English part of the name through a bit of historical research: the town was founded by Major James Abbott in 1853. As for the ending, I was familiar with it from many other South Asian city names, e.g., Allahabad, Hyderabad, and Ahmadabad.
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