Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Spell-Check, Please?


Can someone please tell me just how his name is actually spelled?  It is probably not a high priority for most, but all of the different spellings of his name is driving me insane.  Yeah, like I had all that far to go before, I know.

Anyway, ABC, CBS, CNN and MSNBC generally has it as Moammar Gadhafi while the BBC, FOX and Wikipedia has it as Muammar Gaddafi.  There are times when CBS also goes with Mommar Gadhafi.


The same goes for this feller.  For ABC, BBC and MSNBC generally go with Osama Bin Laden while CBS, CNN and Wikipedia generally go with Osama bin Laden.  FOX News stands alone with Usama bin Laden.

Okay, now let’s check-out the spellings for Osama’s bunch.  For ABC, CBS generally go with al Qaeda while the BBC, CNN and FOX go with Al Qaeda.  MSNBC has it as al-Qaida, and Wikipedia has it as al-Qaeda.

Well, as long as we are on the subject, let’s see what there is for the book that served as a source of inspiration for the dearly departed Osama, and you can find it spelled as the Qu’ran, Quran and the Koran by all those sources.  You can also find all of the different spellings for the other objects of my scrutiny employed by ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, FOX, MSNBC from time to time.  Yeah, I probably should just let it go.

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4 comments:

Unknown said...

They're Arabic words/names, so the "correct spelling" would look like a scribble to us. What you're seeing is phonetic attempts.

Unknown said...

Thanks for stopping by, my dear Canadian Doomer!!! So, there is no way to accurately translate the Arabic alphabet into English? I can understand how a name (or a word) might not look like it should be spelled that way in English, but I would think that it would be consistent across the board.

Unknown said...

Well, it might seem like a big deal to us, but that's because we use this alphabet AND we're accustomed to standardized spellings for names.

القذافي - if that shows up properly, that translates into English as any of:
Gadafi, Gadaffi, Gaddafi, Gaddaffi, Gadhafi, Gadhaffi, Ghadafi, Ghadaffi, Ghaddafi, Ghaddaffi, Ghadhafi, Ghadhaffi, Kadafi, Kadaffi, Kaddafi, Kadhafi, Khadafi, Khaddafi, Khaddaffi, Khadhafi, Khadhaffi, Qadafi, Qadaffi, Qaddafi, Qaddaffi, Qadhafi, Qadhaffi, Qadhdhafi, Qathafi

I don't think the man in question cares what people call him in English. :)

Anyway, Arabic is so utterly different than English. They don't have the verb "to be"! You'll just have to accept - there's no standardized way to transliterate Arabic names into English. :)

C.D.

Unknown said...

Thank you for getting back to me about this, my dear Canadian Doomer!!! For I was thinking that all of the different spelling had to do with the poor news reporting standards these days, but it sounds like it can't be avoided unless they all get together and settle on one specific English spelling, which is unlikely.