Are English speakers also apt to automatically misspell the name of the airline, Qantas?

[VinylTurnip]

@Floater

I noted the other day that newspapers in Sweden spell it correctly, but whenever the company was mentioned in the radio it was pronounced “kwantas”.

That’s how the koala who hated them pronounced it on their commercials from when I was a kid, too. Is that not correct?

[mhendo]

A search reveals that there are, in addition to this one, 39 other threads on the SDMB containing the spelling “Quantas.”

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Grumman

Some are Chinese, some are Hebrew, some are Arabic. The ones that aren’t are either shortened words (tranq) or just a collection of letters (qwerty).

They’re also English, mon ami.

[mhendo]

@Bites_When_Provoked

It stands for Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services. Once you know it’s an acronym (even without full capitalisation) it’s easy to remember that it doesn’t need a ‘U’.

As someone who grew up in Australia, and spent much of his life seeing Qantas ads on TV, and watching Qantas planes take off and land, i find it incredibly jarring to see the word spelled with a “u” in it.

[Richard_Pearse]

@Floater

I noted the other day that newspapers in Sweden spell it correctly, but whenever the company was mentioned in the radio it was pronounced “kwantas”.

That is how it is pronounced. As an acronym for Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services, it has the full “Qu” sound from Queensland even though it only carries the initial Q.