The Straits Times
How do you spell a problem like Muammar Gaddafi?
CAIRO - GADDAFI, Qaddafi, Qazzafi, Qadhdhafi, Qaththafi, Gadhdhafi, Khadafy? Gadhafi.
Read about the unrest in Libya and you might wonder: The man has been in power for 41 years, can't anyone spell his name? For a leader so notoriously mercurial, perhaps it's fitting no one can pin down Muammar Gaddafi's last name using the English alphabet. It's not just media organisations, even official Libyan government documents vary widely in rendering his name in Latin letters.
The Associated Press goes with Gadhafi. Why? It has to do with pronunciation - along with a series of letters the Libyan leader sent to American schoolchildren more than 25 years ago.
The spelling is complicated by a perfect storm of issues: Arabic letters or sounds that don't exist in English, differences in pronunciation between formal Arabic and dialects, and differences between transliteration systems.
Let's take it Arabic letter by Arabic letter: His name's first letter is the Qaf, representing a sound that does not exist in English. It's sort of like a K but sounded from the back of the palate. (And no, it's not the rough 'kh' or German 'ch' sound - that's yet a different letter.) Usually the Qaf is transliterated with a Q, as in Quran and Qatar and Iraq. An outdated but still seen transliteration is K, as in Koran.
But its pronunciation varies in different Arabic dialects. In Libya, it's often pronounced as a G, so that's the letter the AP and some others use. -- AP
http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/World/Story/STIStory_643655.html
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