English Readings for (Japanese) Chinese Characters
Bill Poser has recently noted an interesting reading for a Chinese character. I'll quote the languagelog entry below:

I was in Cambridge, England a few days ago and encountered an interesting spelling on a sign for the Cambridge Chinese Christian Church. The word Cambridge was spelled 劍橋. If we simply read this in Cantonese it comes out [kím kʰjū], which is not very much like Cambridge. The two characters mean "double-edged sword" and "bridge". The first character, 劍, is used for its sound; the second, 橋, is given its English pronounciation [bɹɪʤ].

Now, the English pronunciation for a Chinese character is interesting, but that aside, the mixing of English with Chinese is (as far as I can tell) a rather common phenomenon, particularly with those segments of the Chinese-speaking population with wide exposure to English. Particularly in (Honk Kong) movies, there is a lot of English mixed in. (You get the same sort of thing, but moreso, with Indian movies.)

But, the phenomenon isn't limited to Chinese alone. There is an army base in Miyazaki Prefecture on Kyuushuu island (九州・宮崎県) called 新田原. The original name for this place was pronounced shin-den-baru (new-paddy-field). But the current pronunciation is nyuu-ta-baru. That is, the first character, which means new, is now being pronounced with the (Japanese rendition of the) English word. (Oh, and for some other reason the second character now has a native Japanese reading instead of a Chinese reading...not sure why that is - generally the SJ readings go just as fine with foreign words as they do with other SJ morphemes).

Preview for next entry: The 山鉾巡行, part of the Gion festival (one of Japan's largest)