I was meeting with a bunch of business people who know no Arabic and little about the Middle East. The conversation turned to Libya and one of them turned to me and asked why there were so many spellings of Qadhafi's name. What follows is what I said, which is very much what Kal of TMND argues, except I put it in laymen's terms, without the phonetics.
Ancient, medieval, Islamic and world history -- comments, resources and discussion.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Qs and Ks and other ways of transliterating Arabic
The Arabist explains:
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To make it even more complicated, the "dh" is often pronounced like our "z" in Egyptian dialect. Transcribing Arabic names is an important problem for database creators and users, whether you want to look up a library book or check someone against a most-wanted list!
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