On 12/13/06, David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at> wrote:
Shanxi is the Chinese province "Mountain West", situated between Shandong "Mountain East" and... Shanxi "Decidely Unpopular Region West". The first syllable of the latter is not pronounced the same way (the tone differs), and of course the character is not the same either.
Some old books differentiate those by writing "Shansi" and "Shaansi", but I can never recall which is which ...
-- Andreas Johansson
Why can't you be a non-conformist just like everybody else?