5 ms·

> But it is very rich in vocabulary. Arabs love parallelism in writing, and seem to have three versions of every word for that purpose. English-only speaker he

by defen 15y ago

> But it is very rich in vocabulary. Arabs love parallelism in writing, and seem to have three versions of every word for that purpose. English-only speaker here. I've seen about 50 different variants of "Muammar Gaddafi" rendered into English - is this due to different ways of Anglicizing the same name, or does he really have a 50 different ways of writing it, or something in between?

JMStewy 15y ago
There's some discussion of this exact topic on Language Log here: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2989 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2989 From the post and the comments I found the following two links interesting: http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2011/02/libya http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2011/02/libya http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/513/how-are-you-supposed-to-spell-muammar-gaddafi-khadafy-qadhafi http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/513/how-are-you-sup...
genieyclo 15y ago
Just because of Anglicization and no standard way to do this. His name has 2 Arabic letters that are not found in English, 3ain and Qaaf. The rest of the variation is also due to English not having a consistent way to spell itself and no consistent way to transliterate Ar --> En. You can also see this in the most common Arabic name as well: Muhammad. Some spell with three ms, some 2. Some spell with u and some with o. Personally, to be pseudo-unique snowflake (and to give myself a leg up in SEO) I spell my name a little unusually as 'Mohomed'.
- leviathan 15y ago
  actually three letters, there's also the Thal, which is like a "d" (Dal) with a point on top of it, and pronounced as a deep version of "th." So it's basically Qathafi. But given the fact that there's a "chaddah" on top of it, all hell breaks loose when you're trying to write it in English.
  - genieyclo 15y ago
    Yep, forgot about the thaal. And yes, the shaddah is one of the big reasons for different spellings, some choose to put one meem in Muhammad (like I do), some try to be more "purist" and put double as is normal spelled in English. Mu3ammar has one shaddah on the second meem and a another shaddah on the thaal in Ghaddafi.

by defen 15y ago

JMStewy 15y ago

There's some discussion of this exact topic on Language Log here: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2989 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2989 From the post and the comments I found the following two links interesting: http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2011/02/libya http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2011/02/libya http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/513/how-are-you-supposed-to-spell-muammar-gaddafi-khadafy-qadhafi http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/513/how-are-you-sup...

genieyclo 15y ago

Just because of Anglicization and no standard way to do this. His name has 2 Arabic letters that are not found in English, 3ain and Qaaf. The rest of the variation is also due to English not having a consistent way to spell itself and no consistent way to transliterate Ar --> En. You can also see this in the most common Arabic name as well: Muhammad. Some spell with three ms, some 2. Some spell with u and some with o. Personally, to be pseudo-unique snowflake (and to give myself a leg up in SEO) I spell my name a little unusually as 'Mohomed'.

leviathan 15y ago
actually three letters, there's also the Thal, which is like a "d" (Dal) with a point on top of it, and pronounced as a deep version of "th." So it's basically Qathafi. But given the fact that there's a "chaddah" on top of it, all hell breaks loose when you're trying to write it in English.
- genieyclo 15y ago
  Yep, forgot about the thaal. And yes, the shaddah is one of the big reasons for different spellings, some choose to put one meem in Muhammad (like I do), some try to be more "purist" and put double as is normal spelled in English. Mu3ammar has one shaddah on the second meem and a another shaddah on the thaal in Ghaddafi.