ginormous (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Benjamin Zimmer]

There's actually nothing like an "eye" diphthong in the (modern
standard) Arabic pronunciation of "al Qaida" -- the scholarly
transliteration would be <al qa:`ida>, where <a:> is a long "a" vowel
and <`> is the ayin or voiced pharyngeal fricative. The ayin is
frequently omitted in foreign pronunciations and transcriptions of
Arabic (since it's rare outside Semitic languages), but it's there in
the original separating the two vowels. If the ayin isn't going to be
represented orthographically, then the "ae" spelling might be
preferable to remind the reader that there's no diphthong there.

--Ben Zimmer


On 7/12/07, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> WAG: Is it the case that "ai" is intended to represent the
> Classical-Arabic sound, whereas "ae" is meant to reflect a more modern
> pronunciation? Or not.
>
> -Wilson, who knows of Arabic only that it is a Semitic language
>
>
> On 7/12/07, Tom Zurinskas <truespel at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Sorry all about the "K" I wrote in Al Kaeda, Al Kaida.  That should have
> > been Al Qaeda, Al Qaida.  Basically I was focusing on the ae/ai difference.
> > I had always seen it as "ai" before.  Now I see it "ae" in the newspapers.
> >
> > For truespel I needed a phonetic spelling for the sound "eye" (long i).  I
> > picked ~ie (as in "pie,lie,tried).  This is in line with a rule that all
> > "long" vowels are spelled with silent e moved over next to them
> > (ae,ee,ie,oe,ue).
> >
> > More predominant for spelling that sound is the leter "i" alone (primarily
> > due to the word "I".  Next is "i" with "silent e" and then "y", "igh", "ie"
> > and "eye" with a few others.

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