# the Q in Qatar **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 7, 2012, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-q-in-qatar/615001 "2012-03-07T02:20:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Shig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Shig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shig)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2012, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-q-in-qatar/615001/1 "2012-03-07T02:20:27Z")
There’s lots and lots of examples out there of what I’m about to ask about, but the title of this thread is the example that always comes to mind for me. I want to know why words (or in the this case, places) have English spellings that don’t really seem to make sense in English. In Qatar, Arabic is the language and as far as I know, it doesn’t have any of the letters we use. I can only assume then that we spell it using our alphabet based on the way it sounds when it is pronounced in Arabic. This is where I get confused. “Q” is a letter that is followed by “U” (always, I think) and from what I’ve been told, the actual pronunciation of the country sounds like “cutter.” So, why do we spell things from foreign languages in a way that makes them harder to pronounce than they actually are? ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2012, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-q-in-qatar/615001/2 "2012-03-07T02:29:55Z")
In English, the “natural” way to pronounce Q is an off, almost aspirated “k” sound (it’s annoyingly common in fantasy and Sci-fi). Don’t ask me why, but it’s been intuitive to me as long as I can remember. I think the point of it is 1. to make it look a little exotic (so we know that’s a foreign name), and 2. to emphasize it’s not the real sound. There’s a whole host of other possible reasons like standardized “rules” for localization of words and names from that part of the world, but that just raises the question of why the rule is that. The question is why we lack consistency. The native pronunciation of Iraq (according to a linguistics class and two native speakers) involves a consonant at the front that’s not really that perceptible to English speakers (it’s either a Glottal Stop or Voiced Pharyngeal Fricative, can’t remember which). I’m curious about whether or not it’s the same sound and if so why we localized it in one case but not the other. Maybe someone can give a more exact answer, but I think it’s at least partially due to the fact that we had to assign a standard English letter to a sound that doesn’t strictly exist in English, but is naturally spoken similarly. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2012, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-q-in-qatar/615001/3 "2012-03-07T03:43:19Z")
The English Q has its roots in the Phoenician letter qoph, which then evolved into the Greek quoppa (and skipping some steps) and eventually became the English Q. IIRC it was during the Greek phase that the sound associated with the letter changed, and the original Q sound now no longer exists in English. This is why there are so many different spellings of Gaddafi/Kadafi/Qaddafi/etc depending on who translated the name. At least Qatar is spelled relatively consistently. No matter how you spell it in English, you probably aren’t pronouncing it correctly because you aren’t used to the sound. If you want a comparison you can relate to, you are probably pronouncing it about as well as Japanese folks pronounce English words with R and L in them. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2012, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-q-in-qatar/615001/4 "2012-03-07T04:15:39Z")
While we wait for those who know more, I will propose that the “Q” used for many Arabic words represents a voiceless uvular plosive. > **[Voiceless uvular plosive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_uvular_plosive)** > > The voiceless uvular plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. It is pronounced like a voiceless velar plosive \[k\], except that the tongue makes contact not on the soft palate but on the uvula. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨q⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is q. > There is also the voiceless pre-uvular plosive in some languages, which is articulated slightly more front compared with the place of articulati... ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2012, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-q-in-qatar/615001/5 "2012-03-07T04:17:40Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > While we wait for those who know more, I will propose that the “Q” used for many Arabic words represents a voiceless uvular plosive. > > [Voiceless uvular plosive - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_uvular_plosive) Uvular Plosive, that was the sound it was. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2012, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-q-in-qatar/615001/6 "2012-03-07T04:40:02Z")
Yeah, I’d guess I’d go along with that 'splosion thing. First, I do not speak Arabic (well, a few words) but my wife is a native speaker. I have never heard a native Arabic speaker say anything like “cutter” for Qatar. I have heard this only from a couple of American news broadcasters. Wikipedia has a pronunciation recording but it sounds like an American approximation rather than an Arabic speaker (but it doesn’t sound like “cutter”). There is no one standard transliteration system for Arabic into the Roman alphabet. There are several conventions but none universal. One very common convention is to render the letter [ق](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%82) as “q”. It is pronounced as described above. We don’t really have this sound in English, and that’s the problem. The closest we come is the “c” in “calm” which many people pronounce farther back in the throat than the “c” in “car.” In Arabic the difference between the letters qaf and kaf (like our “k”) is quite pronounced (no pun intended). This is the same sound that ends “Iraq.” Given the way it’s supposed to sound, “Iraq” is the best spelling to render it in English but because English does not have strict rules of pronunciation people read it as “eye-RACK” or some such thing (it should be ih-RAQ with the “i” as in “in” and the “a” as in “father”, with the ending qaf; let’s not even worry about the rolled “r”). ---
**Author:** ![Vashbul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Vashbul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vashbul)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2012, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-q-in-qatar/615001/7 "2012-03-07T04:46:31Z")
> [@](#): > > No matter how you spell it in English, you probably aren’t pronouncing it correctly because you aren’t used to the sound. Which assumes there _is_ a correct way for English speakers to pronounce it, which is by no means a given. You won’t find an agreement among news organizations, nor dictionaries. Here’s a short little piece from NPR that talks about the problem. [http://www.npr.org/2010/12/03/131790949/More-Than-One-Way-To-Pronounce-Qatar](http://www.npr.org/2010/12/03/131790949/More-Than-One-Way-To-Pronounce-Qatar) It should be said in any case that the way they do it over there does not necessarily prescribe how we must do it over here, particularly when it involves vocal sounds we aren’t good at. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2012, 11:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-q-in-qatar/615001/8 "2012-03-07T11:53:02Z")
Uvular consonants aren’t really difficult for an English speaker to produce, but unfortunately our teaching system is completely devoid of instruction in basic phonetics and phonology. Thus we are reduced to explanations like “it should be ih-RAQ with the ‘i’ as in ‘in’ and the ‘a’ as in ‘father’.” Btw a plosive is just an oral stop. Starting with the front of the mouth, the voiceless ones that we typically use in English are /p/, /t/, /k/. Almost all languages have these. /q/ is just a little farther back. > **[Plosive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plosive)** > > In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. > The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (\[t\], \[d\]), tongue body (\[k\], \[ɡ\]), lips (\[p\], \[b\]), or glottis (\[ʔ\]). Plosives contrast with nasals, where the vocal tract is blocked but airflow continues through the nose, as in /m/ and /n/, and with fricatives, where partial occlusion impedes but does not block airflow in the vocal ... ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2012, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-q-in-qatar/615001/9 "2012-03-07T13:03:51Z")
> [@Shig](#): > > “Q” is a letter that is followed by “U” (always, I think) and from what I’ve been told, the actual pronunciation of the country sounds like “cutter.” :::Hijack::: If you hear The Cutter by Echo and the Bunnymen, it sounds like he is singing “Spare us the Qatar” a lot more than it sounds like “Cutter”. No word on whether Ian is a secret Asian man or not. ---
**Author:** ![Chessic\_Sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7c8e57/32.png) [@Chessic\_Sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chessic_Sense)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2012, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-q-in-qatar/615001/10 "2012-03-07T13:32:09Z")
Some of you may have noticed my pet peeve when people spell al Qaida with a ‘u’. It’s worse, to me, than misspelling Barack.