Qadhdhafi (was: How you pronunce foreign place names)

On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 16:23:42 +0100, Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
wrote:

>On 1/21/07, Roger Mills <rfmilly@...> wrote:
>> About that Arabic q:  poor Qaddafi, [...]--- one
>> sees them written/pronounced all over the map.
>
>Though arguably even [q] is doing the poor fellow unjustice -- it's
>not how /q/ is pronounced in his native 'lect, AFAIK. (Though I'm not
>sure whether it'd be appropriate in MSA -- I'm not sure how much the
>local varieties' phonologies influence the local accent of MSA.)
Googling this is difficult in English, but apparently the Library of
Congress preferred translit is <Qadhdhafi>, reflecting an MSA pronunciation
/qaDDafi/, while Mo himself seems to have used <Gadhafi>, reflecting Libyan
dialect. Years back, when he was still perceived as a 'serious threat',
there was an article that discussed all the ways his name is spelled, noting
that eg the Egyptians pronounce it something like /?azafi/.

Bfowol