Because I’ve been reading all of the Saddam threads and losing my mind…
It’s Iraq. Capital I, q at the end. There is no “k” in the word.
The people of Iraq are Iraqis. There is no “u” in this word. They are not Iraqys, Iraqies, Iraquis or any other bizarro-world variation on the theme.
They sure as hell aren’t Iraqi’s and that construction should only be used if you are speaking about something which belongs to a single Iraqi citizen, i.e. “the Iraqi’s hat.”
If you don’t know the difference between plurals and possessives yet, you probably shouldn’t be posting about important world issues.
The man who was captured was Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein. He was the nominal head of the Baath party, whose supporters are known as Baathists. That’s Baath. Note and use those double letters in the middle.
Hussein was found near Tikrit. Note that the only vowel in that word is “i.”
He was captured by the Fourth Infantry Division. Infantry, not infantrie or infanty, and it has nothing to do with babies.
Please absorb these facts, people. We’re fighting ignorance here, and basic spelling and grammatical errors are the most easily irradicated form of that particular pernicious pathogen.
Oh, and since this is the Pit, dammit dammit son of a bitch.
Your experience is not universal. The spelling Irak has been used for centuries in some languages. It’s how it is spelled in Spanish, Portugese, French, Netherlands and German. So for a true international polyglot there’s bound to be some slippage in ordinary use.
Same for the spelling of both Saddam and Hussein. Lots of variation.
Arabic and Persian (the two languages most in use in the Middle East) are written with entirely different alphabets than the Roman variants we use in the West. Every Roman-alphabet representation of Arabic or Persian names is very much a shot-in-the-dark based on pronunciation, with different linguistic areas using different transliterations. This is one reason the good dictator of Libya has been named Ghaddafi, Ghaddafiy, Qaddafi, Quaddafi and Khadaffy.
Names of countries are no different. Strictly speaking, Saudi Arabia should be transliterated 'Arabiyya (I know that’s supposed to be a glottal stop at the beginning, but damned if I can manage it here).
I believe you mean eradicated? Or Iraqicated? Or perhaps irradicable, meaning “impossible to eradicate.” Heh, must be a law that says if you gripe about spelling, you’re bound to make a mistake yourself.
Actually, it does. The etymology of the word infantry is from the word infant. infantry
\In"fan*try, n. [F. infanterie, It. infanteria, fr. infante infant, child, boy servant, foot soldier, fr. L. infans, -antis, child; foot soldiers being formerly the servants and followers of knights. See Infant.] 1. A body of children. [Obs.] --B. Jonson.
(Mil.) A body of soldiers serving on foot; foot soldiers, in distinction from cavalry.
Actually, if I remember my Arabic correctly, the first letter is a `ayn (with the transliteration usually looking vaguely like a superscripted “c”), and isn’t a glottal stop, but a consonant that sounds vaguely like a sheep being choked.
