Comments on: Pronouncing words

Pronouncing words

Mack Twain — Sat, 29 Mar 2003 10:01:39 -0800

Qatar Home of Central Command and Al Jazzera television, it's a small oil-rich country we've all heard of, and that's the problem: I hear Qatar called Cutter, Gutter, Katar, and Kwatar. How do the Qataris' pronounce it; is it possible to accurately pronounce foreign words in English? Who decides? More inside...

By: Mack Twain

Mack Twain — Sat, 29 Mar 2003 10:03:28 -0800

This business of flexible pronouncement of words seems rampant: Words such as didn't, couldn't and wouldn't used to be pronounced did-ent, could-ent and would-ent but now seem to have an extra "d' and are often pronounced did-dent, could-dent and would-dent. What's up with that? Did it all start when someone called the Planet Uranus (formerly called your-a-niss) your-anus?

By: blue mustard

blue mustard — Sat, 29 Mar 2003 10:08:58 -0800

This article, from Slate explains how to pronouce Qatar, and includes an audio clip of an arabic speaker pronouncing the word.

By: RobbieFal

RobbieFal — Sat, 29 Mar 2003 10:13:12 -0800

so, it's pronounced 'Carter'? No wonder the media doesn't want to get it right. ;)

By: Ayn Marx

Ayn Marx — Sat, 29 Mar 2003 10:13:18 -0800

Mack Twain, where have your heard such pronunciation? And, regarding how you say the name of a certain planet: Q. What does toilet paper and the starship Enterprise have in common? A. They both circle Uranus and wipe out Klingons. See how important these things are?

By: Pretty_Generic

Pretty_Generic — Sat, 29 Mar 2003 10:18:44 -0800

Usama bin Laden and Saddam Husayn are probably behind this.

By: duckstab

duckstab — Sat, 29 Mar 2003 10:18:54 -0800

I must just be lazy. When I say "didn't" "couldn't" or "wouldn't", the tip of my tounge doesn't leave the roof of my mouth once I hit the last "d". No "ent" or "dent", I'm not even sure if I pronounce the final "t". "wouldn't" differs pretty much only in inflection from "wooden". Only space robots say 'would dent'. Related thread here.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Sat, 29 Mar 2003 10:25:07 -0800

You're mixing up different things; the pronunciation of English words doesn't have much to do with the pronunciation of foreign place names. As far as Qatar is concerned, there are two issues. The first is that nobody had much occasion to refer to the place in English conversation until recently (and even less occasion to hear Arabic-speakers pronounce it), so when people saw the word they just applied basic rules on "how to pronounce funny-looking foreign words" and it came out sounding like "catarrh." This would have been reasonably close if the second a were long in Arabic, but it's not, so it should be "cutter" or "gutter." The problem here is that both are already English words, so there's a slight discomfort (which will presumably disappear as we get used to the more nearly correct pronunciation). The other issue is that the initial q varies in pronunciation depending on Arabic dialect. In Classical Arabic it's a guttural consonant like a k pronounced as far back in the throat as possible without choking, and this is kept in most dialects for "high-class" words or contexts but replaced in common words by a glottal stop (like the one in the middle of "uh-oh"). I'm assuming Qatar keeps the classical q in standard Saudi Arabic. But in many dialects of the Arabic Peninsula the q becomes a g, hence the "gutter" version. (Also, the -t- is "emphatic," but there's no point getting into that unless you want to learn Arabic.) The dialect spoken in Qatar itself is Gulf Arabic. Probably more than you wanted to know!

By: sixtwenty3dc

sixtwenty3dc — Sat, 29 Mar 2003 10:33:31 -0800

my dad lived there for about 2 years and he insists it's pronounced "ka TAR" < my 2 cents

By: carter

carter — Sat, 29 Mar 2003 10:34:24 -0800

British pronunciation joke (and how many of those are there?): Q: What's the difference between a buffalo and a bison? A: You can't wash your hands in a bison.

By: carter

carter — Sat, 29 Mar 2003 10:37:02 -0800

Damn. Buffalo. Aaargh!

By: mfli

mfli — Sat, 29 Mar 2003 10:40:56 -0800

sixtwenty3dc: my housemate who has lived in Kuwait agrees it's "katar" with emphasis on the "tar".

By: chicobangs

chicobangs — Sat, 29 Mar 2003 10:54:15 -0800

carter, that joke isn't funny unless you screw it up. So, that was my first spit-take in days.

By: spartacusroosevelt

spartacusroosevelt — Sat, 29 Mar 2003 11:01:54 -0800

Remember when the Moslem (Muslem? Muslim?) Bad Guy du Jour was Kadafi (Gadafi? Qu'daiffi?)? Maybe spiritual answer to these dilemmas could be found in the Koran (Qu'rann?). This will always be a problem translating between character sets. Imagine trying to translate our simple English word for canine into another set of characters. Is the word pronounced dog, dawg, doog, or dug?

By: AstroGuy

AstroGuy — Sat, 29 Mar 2003 11:18:06 -0800

I've been wondering about this myself. The audio clip that blue mustard posted sounds like "caught uh" to me. Thanks for the analysis languagehat. I had always suspected that the "gutter" variant was a subtle slur by certain cable news organizations where this pronounciation is mostly heard. I'm glad that is not the case. I don't think there can be a definitive pronounciation throughout the Arabic speaking world any more that there is a definitive U.S. English pronounciation of "Oregon" or "idea(r)". I guess we should ask the Oregonians and Qatari.

By: maus501

maus501 — Sat, 29 Mar 2003 11:40:44 -0800

Never say Or-e-gone. The correct pronunciation is Or-a-gun.

By: whatzit

whatzit — Sat, 29 Mar 2003 12:04:39 -0800

No joke, they had a professor from Qatar on one of the major US network news broadcasts a few weeks ago, talking about this exactly. He also went with ka-TAR. Journalist: So how do you say it? Is it cater, cutter, cotter...?

By: benjh

benjh — Sat, 29 Mar 2003 12:21:41 -0800

Re: The Misspellings (Usama, Husayn) Arabic does not use the same alphabet as English. That's those funny little squigles you see on the screen when al Jazeera is playing. I work with a woman who natively speaks Arabic. She signs her name with initials because, "the spelling is at best a guess based on the pronunciation."

By: jann

jann — Sat, 29 Mar 2003 13:12:15 -0800

no, no. it is oh-REG-un. like oregano. no? please? it would make me laugh every time...

By: askheaves

askheaves — Sat, 29 Mar 2003 13:32:34 -0800

I think we can all agree. If it's hard to pronounce, you'd probably never want to live there.

By: arto

arto — Sat, 29 Mar 2003 13:38:24 -0800

Guys, it's clearly pronounced "Cooter." Also, Saudi Arabia is pronounced "Uncle Jess", Saddam Hussein is pronounced "Boss Hogg", and while Bush and Ashcroft think they're pronounced "Bo" and "Luke" respectively, they're actually pronounced "Enos" and "Cletus." Hope this clears it all up.

By: iconomy

iconomy — Sat, 29 Mar 2003 14:02:21 -0800

ee-raq, uh-raq, eye-raq, yah-raq, ah-raq, or ih-raq?

By: Soliloquy

Soliloquy — Sat, 29 Mar 2003 14:38:08 -0800

God invented war to teach Americans pronunciation.

By: yerfatma

yerfatma — Sat, 29 Mar 2003 14:43:31 -0800

Probably more than you wanted to know! Nope. Thanks for the info.

By: inpHilltr8r

inpHilltr8r — Sat, 29 Mar 2003 15:50:13 -0800

British pronunciation joke (and how many of those are there?): Q: What's the difference between a buffalo and a bison? A: You can't wash your hands in a bison. I always though it worked best with an australian accent.

By: Mack Twain

Mack Twain — Sat, 29 Mar 2003 16:21:44 -0800

Thanx for the input, friends; Just one of 10,743 reasons Metafilter is better than Google...Ayn Marx, I'm ashamed to admit I heard those different pronouncements on the teevee, as always blaming it on 'the children'. I've already used the Enterprise joke! MSNBC is obviously reading Metafilter; they just changed from Cutter to Caughter. As a native Oregonian I need to add that our State is pronounced OREYGUN.

By: loafingcactus

loafingcactus — Sat, 29 Mar 2003 16:44:01 -0800

Ug, a couple of years ago the business I worked for was going to do a big deal with Qatar. Inevitable lunchroom brawl could be generated by the question of how to pronounce "Qatar." Agreement was never reached (on the pronounciation or the deal).

By: Frank Grimes

Frank Grimes — Sat, 29 Mar 2003 17:23:24 -0800

Dacula, GA pronunciation guide. What about Colorado? Color-ah-do or Colo-rad-o?

By: jann

jann — Sat, 29 Mar 2003 17:55:23 -0800

a ray gun? what a cool state.

By: groundhog

groundhog — Sat, 29 Mar 2003 17:59:28 -0800

Lets call the whole thing off.

By: StrangerInAStrainedLand

StrangerInAStrainedLand — Sat, 29 Mar 2003 23:31:59 -0800

duckstab : we are the space robots we are here to protect you

By: newlydead

newlydead — Sun, 30 Mar 2003 05:24:19 -0800

So, how do you pronounce Babel?

By: languagehat

languagehat — Sun, 30 Mar 2003 06:37:33 -0800

BAY-ble (as in "The babe'll be there"). Some people do say BABB-le, but that's confusing because it sounds exactly like "babble" (which is not related, by the way—it's onomatopoetic). Unless you speak Yiddish, in which case you say bovvle.