Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Gaddafi? Kadafi? Qaddafi? What's the correct spelling?

Gaddafi? Kadafi? Qaddafi? What's the correct spelling?

2 comments:

  1. Also what complicates the matter is local vs. standard Arabic.

    Using standard Arabic, the name transliterates to IPA:

    mʕmr ʔl qðʔfj

    The glottal stop ʔ can be used to represent long a, and the palatal semivowel j can be used to represent long i, so this is what we have to work with!

    mʕmr al qðafi

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  2. [continued - pressed submit by accident]

    What is missing are the short vowels, which consonants are lengthened, and which consonants are implicitly velarized.

    In standard Arabic, there are a fixed number of syllable patterns, so the pronunciation written in broad IPA is more-or-less:

    muʕmːar al qaðˠːaːfiː

    However many dialects of Arabic will substitute voiced velar stops for uvular stops, as well as a dental stops for dental fricatives.

    Roman orthography may or may not represent the long consonants and vowels and velarization after a uvular stop.

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