Sweden is written as 瑞典 in Chinese characters and it is pronounced as “rui dian”, which is the pronunciation in China’s capital language Mandarin.
Some time further up China’s history, when the capital language was the predecessor of China’s Min Nan language such as Teochew and Hokkien, 瑞典 is pronounced as “swee din”.
Now consider 德士 (taxi), which is pronounced as “teck see”.
This post is a mini part of a broader discussion here:
On the evolution of languages
Know of any more such examples? Please comment below.
Keching 