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[Vector]

I agree.  It's pretty absurd.

[Aqizzar]

"Qaddafi" is the only one I've noticed that Firefox's spellchecker seems to recognize, so that's what I use.  Plus, my established love of unattached Q's.  I'd say that journalists at least should agree to one common way to spell his name, since he's a head of state, but given it's Qaddafi we're talking about, he may very well encourage the confusion himself.

[Sowelu]

There's the correct way to spell it, and then there's the phonetic-ish way to spell it.

Qadaffi is correct.  But if you show that to a lot of people, they'll pronounce it "Quadaffi", which is very bad.  "Khadaffi" is closer at least.

[Willfor]

There's the correct way to spell it, and then there's the phonetic-ish way to spell it.

Qadaffi is correct.  But if you show that to a lot of people, they'll pronounce it "Quadaffi", which is very bad.  "Khadaffi" is closer at least.

So it's pronounced 'Q' as in Aqizzar?

[Vector]

Depends on how you pronounce Aqizzar.

[Willfor]

Ack-iz-arr. There is no 'U', after all.

[Vector]

Then no.  Go look up sound files of Arabic letter "qaaf."

[Christes]

I've always imagined Aqizzar with an uvular plosive myself.  I have no idea how qaaf pronounced in the Libyan variant of Arabic, though.

Yeah I know Arabic and English are very different languages but I'd like for some linguists to come together and agree on one spelling for this kind of thing.

TBH linguists generally don't care about spelling.  Writing in IPA is fun though.

Anyway... this post is mostly to bookmark this thread.  /OT

[Puzzlemaker]

http://www.bunny-comic.com/strips/libya.jpg

[RedKing]

I've always imagined Aqizzar with an uvular plosive myself. 

I read this at first as "uvular explosive". And then imagined a suicide uvula bomber. 


FWIW, there's similar problems transliterating Russian, because of some of the indistinct vowels like й and end-modifiers like ъ, ы, and ь (which I still only half-understand, even after years of study). I mean, even the word "Soviet" (Советский) can be tranlisterated Sovetsky, Sovetskii, Sovetskiy, or Sovetski.

And don't get me started on Chinese transliteration schemes.

I use Qaddafi myself, because the bits of Arabic I know are usually transliterated in that fashion. I think when I was a kid in the 80's, it got spelled Gaddafi or Khadafy, I think. (And of course, the radio morning DJ favorite, "Khadaffy Duck"). Come to think of it, there was a novelty song in '86 called "How Do You Spell Khadafy?"

[RedKing]

SirP: I could spend the next few hours digging up charts of gains in literacy rates, infant mortality rates, life expectancies, etc. in scores of countries in the last 50 years and show how these came about through the assistance of NGO's. But frankly, you're not worth it. You wanna be that guy who is fashionably cyncial and dismissive about 'brown people countries', go right ahead. I'll be with the thousands of uncool, naive schmucks who spend their lives working in the belief that things can get better.

Yes, that's why I'm advocating instead spending those resources on urban renewal, housing, soup kitchens, and education, rather than wasting a massive portion of said resources carting supplies and labor across the goddamn world, to accomplish only the most trivial and ephemeral of benefits.

Friend of mine in Cameroon just got a water filtration system up and running at an orphanage today.
Total cost: about $35, built mostly out of local supplies. She even had enough left over to buy new mattresses.
Effects: The kids have clean drinking water, probably for the first time in their lives. I.e. less parasites, infections, deaths from dysentary, etc.

Wasted money?

[Zangi]

SirP: I could spend the next few hours digging up charts of gains in literacy rates, infant mortality rates, life expectancies, etc. in scores of countries in the last 50 years and show how these came about through the assistance of NGO's. But frankly, you're not worth it. You wanna be that guy who is fashionably cyncial and dismissive about 'brown people countries', go right ahead. I'll be with the thousands of uncool, naive schmucks who spend their lives working in the belief that things can get better.

Yes, that's why I'm advocating instead spending those resources on urban renewal, housing, soup kitchens, and education, rather than wasting a massive portion of said resources carting supplies and labor across the goddamn world, to accomplish only the most trivial and ephemeral of benefits.

Friend of mine in Cameroon just got a water filtration system up and running at an orphanage today.
Total cost: about $35, built mostly out of local supplies. She even had enough left over to buy new mattresses.
Effects: The kids have clean drinking water, probably for the first time in their lives. I.e. less parasites, infections, deaths from dysentary, etc.

Wasted money?

How long will that status effect last?
Does anyone there know how to maintain it?
Did anyone there learn how to do the same?

[RedKing]

SirP: I could spend the next few hours digging up charts of gains in literacy rates, infant mortality rates, life expectancies, etc. in scores of countries in the last 50 years and show how these came about through the assistance of NGO's. But frankly, you're not worth it. You wanna be that guy who is fashionably cyncial and dismissive about 'brown people countries', go right ahead. I'll be with the thousands of uncool, naive schmucks who spend their lives working in the belief that things can get better.

Yes, that's why I'm advocating instead spending those resources on urban renewal, housing, soup kitchens, and education, rather than wasting a massive portion of said resources carting supplies and labor across the goddamn world, to accomplish only the most trivial and ephemeral of benefits.

Friend of mine in Cameroon just got a water filtration system up and running at an orphanage today.
Total cost: about $35, built mostly out of local supplies. She even had enough left over to buy new mattresses.
Effects: The kids have clean drinking water, probably for the first time in their lives. I.e. less parasites, infections, deaths from dysentary, etc.

Wasted money?

How long will that status effect last?
Does anyone there know how to maintain it?
Did anyone there learn how to do the same?

Not sure the filtration system they used, but yes...part of the program includes training workers at the orphanage in how it's built (they helped build the first one) and how to maintain it. And it's a low-cost, sustainable solution. Development aid has changed a lot over the last 20 years or so. It's no longer "dump a bunch of food and build some roads and then leave".

[Zangi]

Thanks, I believe that better answers Sir P's issue.

[PTTG??]

Friend of mine in Cameroon just got a water filtration system up and running at an orphanage today.
Total cost: about $35, built mostly out of local supplies. She even had enough left over to buy new mattresses.
Effects: The kids have clean drinking water, probably for the first time in their lives. I.e. less parasites, infections, deaths from dysentary, etc.

What group does your friend work with?