Here at CJR, we’ve been thinking a lot lately about the informational implications of fragmentation in the news. So we’ve been appreciating the nice little metaphor occasioned by the appearance of Muammar Quaddafi [sic? maybe?] at the UN earlier today: media outlets’ wildly divergent—and yet, all kind of correct—spellings of the Libyan president’s name:
CNN: Gadhafi
Fox News: Qaddafi
MSNBC: Khaddafy
AP: Gadhafi
New York Times: Qaddafi
Wikipedia: al-Gaddafi
The Washington Post, however, wins some kind of prize for its employment of two different spellings in the same paper: Gaddafi and, in a reprinted AP article, Gadhafi.
The debate in the US media on the spelling of Qadhafi goes back to the early 1980s. It relates to confusion regarding proper transliteration of letters of the Arabic alphabet and lack of due diligence. This is reinforced by the fact that there are differences between the written form of Qadhafi and the way it iis pronounced in variations of spoken Arabic. The letter G does not exist in written Arabic but does in spoken Arabic. Kh is a different letter from Q which is a voiced consonant in Arabic. Araibic also distinguishes between d and dh, the latter being the equivalent of th in the English word the. Qadhafi is spelled in Arabic with a Q and a dh and one f, not with a G, Kh or double f. Discrepancies in whether to use an i or a y at the end of Qadafi relate to the fact that the y in Arabic often serves as a i
#1 Posted by James M. Dorsey, CJR on Thu 24 Sep 2009 at 09:18 AM
Here's my way of spelling Quaddafi = Jagoff
#2 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Thu 24 Sep 2009 at 04:00 PM