How many ways can you find to spell "Qaddafi"?

[Tante Shvester]

The New York Times spells it "Qaddafi", but I've seen more variants of that name than I have of "Chanukah".  How does your news source spell the name of the Libyan tyrant?

[pooka]

I like Ghaddafi, but I'd have the check the Arabic.

[pooka]

Qaddafi is the best option.  It is a voiced velar stop, written by Arabists as Q, and the d is geminate (ending one syllable and then beginning the next).  GH is a voiced... not sure where I'm making it but it's back there somewhere.  It's similar to the consonant in his first name that we make between the ua.  But Muammar gets the average journalist pretty close, while Muchammar would result in abominations.

[Marianne Dashwood]

I've seen Gaddafi, but I think that's because whoever wrote that one didn't know how to represent the Arabic Q sound.

Is there a standard Romanization for Arabic, or are there several and one that's most popular? (I'm guessing that's what you meant by saying it's the way Arabists would write it)

I think it's about time we figured out a standard Romanization for everything, just to keep the world on the same page. (Taiwan, I'm glaring at you.)

[BlackBlade]

I think it's about time we figured out a standard Romanization for everything, just to keep the world on the same page. (Taiwan, I'm glaring at you.)

*Joins Annie's glaring*

Though lets be honest, until Journalists stop spelling it Peking, we're never going to sleep at night.

[pooka]

There are different systems of romanizing Arabic, but q is pretty accepted for that particular letter.  The challenge is whether you want to be very accurate and use the IPA or have something people can produce using a typewriter.  Heck, English doesn't even have a foolproof system for romanizing pronunciation. 

[rivka]

I think it's about time we figured out a standard Romanization for everything, just to keep the world on the same page.

No, because then I'll have to stick to the "standard" ones for Hebrew, and I think several of them are stupid.

[Marianne Dashwood]

Well, a good Romanization system doesn't have to represent pronunciation (that's what the IPA is for), it just has to be consistent. English orthography doesn't tell you much about how to say a word, but if you see it written somewhere you can look it up in a dictionary somewhere else.

There was a teacher at my school in Taiwan who railed against Hanyu Pinyin because it "didn't make any sense. A q? Q doesn't make that sound. How will foreigners know how to say it?" Well, the thing is, Hanyu Pinyin is far easier for a foreigner who's learned it to read because it's consistent. You can't represent Mandarin sounds with English letters anyway - there's no use trying to make it "readable." And the way Wade-Giles goes about it, using the letters ch to represent like four different sounds, is confusing and ridiculous.

</rant that no one but BB will care about>

[Jonathon]

Qaddafi is the best option.  It is a voiced velar stop, written by Arabists as Q, and the d is geminate (ending one syllable and then beginning the next).  GH is a voiced... not sure where I'm making it but it's back there somewhere.  It's similar to the consonant in his first name that we make between the ua.  But Muammar gets the average journalist pretty close, while Muchammar would result in abominations.

I thought the letter transliterated as q was uvular, not velar. But I have no idea what letter it actually is in his name.


And I agree with Annie that standard romanization would be really useful. It's just unfortunate that such a limited alphabet came to be used for so many languages it wasn't designed for.

[Marianne Dashwood]

Well, to be fair, some of those languages aren't particularly suited to an alphabet at all.

[rivka]

Well, a good Romanization system doesn't have to represent pronunciation (that's what the IPA is for), it just has to be consistent.

For linguists. For the rest of us hoi polloi, Anglicized spellings absolutely SHOULD indicate pronunciation.

[Jonathon]

Well, to be fair, some of those languages aren't particularly suited to an alphabet at all.

Very true.

For linguists. For the rest of us hoi polloi, Anglicized spellings absolutely SHOULD indicate pronunciation.

But we're talking about romanized spellings, not anglicized spellings. Anglicized spellings are great for telling English speakers (roughly) how to pronounce something, but they're pretty useless for the rest of the roman-alphabet-using world.

[Marianne Dashwood]

Well, a good Romanization system doesn't have to represent pronunciation (that's what the IPA is for), it just has to be consistent.

For linguists. For the rest of us hoi polloi, Anglicized spellings absolutely SHOULD indicate pronunciation.

But they can't. Not even in other languages that use our alphabet. Can you read Swedish and know what the vowels are supposed to sound like? Chinese has many consonants that we don't even have - how can you distinguish between the sound they represent as j and the sound they represent as zh when they both sound like j to the English speaker? And you have to, otherwise you're calling a sheet of paper a piece of ginger.

[Jonathon]

But they can't. Not even in other languages that use our alphabet. Can you read Swedish and know what the vowels are supposed to sound like? Chinese has many consonants that we don't even have - how can you distinguish between the sound they represent as j and the sound they represent as zh when they both sound like j to the English speaker? And you have to, otherwise you're calling a sheet of paper a piece of ginger.

Which exemplifies the point I made above: romanization is not the same thing as anglicization.

[Nighthawk]

I spell it "Loon".

[BlackBlade]

Well, a good Romanization system doesn't have to represent pronunciation (that's what the IPA is for), it just has to be consistent. English orthography doesn't tell you much about how to say a word, but if you see it written somewhere you can look it up in a dictionary somewhere else.

There was a teacher at my school in Taiwan who railed against Hanyu Pinyin because it "didn't make any sense. A q? Q doesn't make that sound. How will foreigners know how to say it?" Well, the thing is, Hanyu Pinyin is far easier for a foreigner who's learned it to read because it's consistent. You can't represent Mandarin sounds with English letters anyway - there's no use trying to make it "readable." And the way Wade-Giles goes about it, using the letters ch to represent like four different sounds, is confusing and ridiculous.

</rant that no one but BB will care about>

*nods head* Though I wonder if it's really as impossible as we think. I mean the "Q" sound we could spell as "Ch". The "Xi" sound we could spell as "Shee" But I completely agree, what matters is consistansy, and the Han Yu romanization works just fine.

Though I do wonder how it is that 佛 is "fo" and 多 is "duo" why isn't the former "fuo" or why isn't the latter "do"?

[Jonathon]

I don't really know anything about Chinese phonology, but from what I've read on Wikipedia, I'm impressed that they can distinguish between alveolar, retroflex, and alveolo-palatal voiceless affricants.

[BlackBlade]

I don't really know anything about Chinese phonology, but from what I've read on Wikipedia, I'm impressed that they can distinguish between alveolar, retroflex, and alveolo-palatal voiceless affricants.

And I'm impressed you are able to just toss out four words of which I have no idea what their meanings are in any context.

[Porter]

I think the whole notion of trying to pin down a correct (or standard) spelling in the roman alphabet for a word from a language that doesn't use the roman alphabet is both humorous and doomed to failure.

Personally, I kinda like that there are multiple spellings of Kadaffi floating around.

[Tante Shvester]

All I know is that I wouldn't want to be in a Scrabble game with him.

[Porter]

Me neither.

I wouldn't want to be in any Scrabble game with anybody.

[Jonathon]

 

[Porter]

Especially you!

[Jonathon]

[Porter]

Better.