There’s also a strong incentive to make pronunciations conform to spelling, viz. “often” with a T.
Well, maybe it kind of is - if I remember correctly, you’re from NYC, right? Some (many?) of those people might not be saying parmesan at all. They might be saying parmigiano, and dropping the last vowel which is common in Southern Italian dialects ( and therefore lots of NYC Italian-Americans) Do you hear manicot’ or manicotti ?
It strikes me that it isn’t a great elision from the Italian ‘gi’ in “parmigiano” to a ‘zh’ (maybe as noted above there are regional differences in Italian pronunciations), and that it came into the US pronunciation through Italian immigrants. But the UK could more likely have adopted a pronunciation through French usage, ending up with British English sounds very similar to “partisan”.
Now, about “Pa-REE-zhun”…
And don’t get me started on “Bei-ZHing”.
How ought an American, or a UK person, pronounce Beijing? That’s not a trap; I genuinely don’t know.
And this cuts to the heart of whether we’re trying to duplicate the sounds a native Chinese speaker from the capital region would use, or we’re trying to use the closest sounds that fit our own accent, or we’re trying to treat this as a loan word being incorporated into English and then pronounce that.
As far as I know and say it “bay-jing”.
Capt. Pike just pronounced parmesan as “par-mə-zhahn” on SNW. (I’m binging.)
That’s also how the characters pronounced Gene Parmesan’s name on Arrested Development.
In this particular case, you got lucky… it’s pretty much the same in English as it is in Mandarin, minus the tones.
Bae (as in baby) - jing (rhymes with king). That’s pretty much how it sounds in Mandarin too. (What @pulykamell said)
And got it, thanks for clarifying.
On this part though, as it relates to the OP, that’s what interesting about parmesan in particular. It’s not really a loan word from Italian, but more from French, and ended up being a butchered “hyperforeignism” of both combined, as @Johanna said (learned a new word!)
I’ve lived on the West Coast my whole life and I have always heard as it as zhan and, to the best of my recollection, NEVER zan or san.
Huh, you know what, I was just reading the Wikipedia article on hyperforeignisms, and Beijing came up there (maybe that’s why you asked?):
Mandarin Chinese names like Beijing (with [tɕ], which sounds like [dʒ] to English speakers) with /ʒ/: /beɪˈʒɪŋ/.[2][8]
I cannot read IPA but maybe they are talking about the “j” sound. In Mandarin it just sounds like the j of “jinx” or “jingle”, not anything special. Maybe some people “hyper-pronounce” it differently, like “beige-ing”?
Thanks. @markn_1 evidently had some very specific ideas on what ought not be done. So I was hoping he could say what ought be done. No answer yet from him.
Zh pronunciation for me. Except around my mom; she (jokingly) calls it Paramecium.
Yes, as Reply said, I was referring to the hypercorrected pronunciation of “Beijing” that uses /ʒ/ (as in “beige” or “pleasure”), when the closest English consonant is actually /dʒ/, the consonant of “jinx”. No Mandarin word contains the /ʒ/ of “beige”; that’s not a phoneme that appears in that language.
Yep. Spot the flaw in this syllogism:
French is a foreign language.
Chinese is a foreign language too.
Ergo, Chinese is pronounced like French.
Hmm… 
Got it!
It’s French that should be pronounced like Chinese? Bonjour should sound more like Beijing? Bahn-zuh, ma-da-muh.
Help me out here. I listened to a pronunciation guide and I can’t tell the difference between that and /ʐ/
I think the difference is /ʐ/ is articulated with the tongue in a retroflex position: curled upward with the tip touching the hard palate. English doesn’t have any retroflex consonants, so it may be hard for an English speaker to hear the difference.
Daffy English knights.