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What is your favorite spelling of Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi's surname?

What is your favorite spelling of Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi's surname?

  • Qadthafi

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مُعَمَّر ٱلْقَذَّافِيّ‎ is his name.

The ق is transcribed as 'q' most often. The ع in his first name is a sound we don't have in most European languages, a laryngeal fricative transcribed ʕ. The ذ is pronounced ð, like the th in 'the' (there are two, a dental and a retroflex version of this sound, but I have forgotten which is which as I cannot differentiate them in speech). This is often transcribed with dh or dd.

Hence in Classical Arabic, he is "Muʕam'ar al-Qaðˤaafii".

Once Libyan Arabic variations are taken into account, that's where the G for Gaddafi comes from. Also, the /θ ð ðˤ/ series of fricatives (in the th sense) have merged with their plosive counterparts /t d dˤ/, hence pronouncing Gaddafi with a hard D.

So the myriad different spellings depend on whether they are using standard Arabic transcription or a phonetic transcription of Libyan Arabic.

Sorry to be so serious!
 
Mar 13, 2009
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Libertine Seguros said:
مُعَمَّر ٱلْقَذَّافِيّ‎ is his name.

The ق is transcribed as 'q' most often. The ع in his first name is a sound we don't have in most European languages, a laryngeal fricative transcribed ʕ. The ذ is pronounced ð, like the th in 'the' (there are two, a dental and a retroflex version of this sound, but I have forgotten which is which as I cannot differentiate them in speech). This is often transcribed with dh or dd.

Hence in Classical Arabic, he is "Muʕam'ar al-Qaðˤaafii".

Once Libyan Arabic variations are taken into account, that's where the G for Gaddafi comes from. Also, the /θ ð ðˤ/ series of fricatives (in the th sense) have merged with their plosive counterparts /t d dˤ/, hence pronouncing Gaddafi with a hard D.

So the myriad different spellings depend on whether they are using standard Arabic transcription or a phonetic transcription of Libyan Arabic.

Sorry to be so serious!

I knew it was only a matter of time until this post was written :D

Always interesting insight
 
The variants of Arabic are really very different, similar to the way Latin transcription changed over the years. I think we are on our way to talking of very specific Arabic languages held together by the classical language. I only did one year of Arabic, and the differences between the classical stuff we learnt and the dialectal things we learnt was significant.

It was also interesting meeting a friend of a friend who had also done a year of Arabic. However, she had done Moroccan Arabic while I had done Lebanese Arabic, and both of us had only done the one year of learning so communication was nigh on impossible.
 
craig1985 said:
Just how many languages do you speak Libertine, BTW?

Not many with any fluency. But I have a bit of foundation knowledge in quite a few and with a background in historical linguistics can explain why changes happen (and can make educated guesswork as to what things in languages related to ones I know mean).

For the record, I have a shelf of language materials at home, which includes material on the following languages:

Arabic
Basque
Czech
Dutch
English
French
German
Greek
Icelandic
Italian
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Sorbian
Spanish
Yiddish

Some of these languages I know little more than basic expressions in (if that), but the material is there in case it was useful, because it was a bargain, because of academic purposes, or simply because it looked interesting (Icelandic, I'm looking at you here... never got anywhere with that!) because of historical-linguistic reasons.
 
Libertine Seguros said:
Not many with any fluency. But I have a bit of foundation knowledge in quite a few and with a background in historical linguistics can explain why changes happen (and can make educated guesswork as to what things in languages related to ones I know mean).

For the record, I have a shelf of language materials at home, which includes material on the following languages:

Arabic
Basque
Czech
Dutch
English
French
German
Greek
Icelandic
Italian
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Sorbian
Spanish
Yiddish

Some of these languages I know little more than basic expressions in (if that), but the material is there in case it was useful, because it was a bargain, because of academic purposes, or simply because it looked interesting (Icelandic, I'm looking at you here... never got anywhere with that!) because of historical-linguistic reasons.

Impressive. If you don't mind my asking, what is your academic training in?
Me... Google translater :D
 

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