Qaeda~Qaida~Quida

[A. Maberry]

True enough. I wish I could find a URL or some link to an audio of someone
pronouncing it correctly. On the basis of a description of the phonetics,
I doubt that anyone could get more than a vague notion of it. The Library
of Congress transliteration scheme retains the final, silent h, so in US
library catalogs it will be al-Qa'idah [the ' looking like a superscript
small "c".

allen
maberry at u.washington.edu

On Tue, 22 Jan 2002, Benjamin Fortson wrote:

> The q is a uvular stop, not a velar, and the "ayin" is not a glottal stop
> (which is found in English--alif in Arabic) but a voiced pharyngeal
> fricative. The "silent but present" h is an h written at the end of the
> word in Arabic but not pronounced; it sometimes shows up in Roman
> transliterations of other words, sometimes not.
>
> Ben Fortson
>
> On Tue, 22 Jan 2002, A. Maberry wrote:
>
> > That would be my guess. I've seen al-Qaida and al-Qaeda but not Quida.
> > They are all trying to represent q [velar]-a [as in "father" but longer in
> > duration]-"ayin" [glottal stop not found in English]- i [short as in "it"
> > but sometimes heard as "e" or schwa- d- a [as in "father" but short-
> > final -h is silent but present.
> >
> > The above is probably as clear as mud, as the saying goes.
> >
> > I heard someone pronounce it correctly last week on NPR but can't remember
> > who it was.
> >
> > allen
> > maberry at u.washington.edu
> >
> > On Sun, 20 Jan 2002, Barnhart wrote:
> >
> > > These variants are listed in the order in which I found them.  This
> > > seems to reflect preference in usage.  _Quida_ is noticeably less
> > > frequent and appears to reflect the customary orthographic traditions
> > > concerning "q" and "u" in English.  Is there a contrast in tradition of
> > > transliteration which accounts for "ae" as opposed to "ai"?
> > >
> > > Regards,
> > > David
> > >
> > > barnhart at highlands.com
> > >
> >
>