There’s phonetically no difference that I can hear between “Koran” and “Quran”–is a difference in pronunciation indicated by the spelling change? If so, what?
Or did someone just decide it was more fun to use a “Qu” instead of a “Ko”
And why did it change all at once*? Did someone suddenly realize “Hey, we’ve been Anglicising the word incorrectly for the last hundred years! :smack:”?
*Or have both been accepted spellings forever and I just now noticed the Qu version?
I can’t speak for everybody, but Qur’an is a more accurate transliteration of the Arabic word, القرآن.
K and Q represent different sounds in Arabic, and really shouldn’t be interchanged, IMHO.
But K and Q in English are pretty much the same sound.
Can you describe how it’s supposed to be prounounced?
The “K” is pronounced from the back of the throat.
The second vowel starts with the “A”, not the “R” - in other words, “koor-AHN” rather that “koo-RAHN”. English speakers may have a problem distinguishing between these.
Nope–I see the difference. 
Thanks Alessan and Gala.
Asked/Answered.
They’ve both been around for awhile. Heinlein used the spelling “Qur’an” (I think I place the apostrophe correctly) in “Stranger in a Strange Land”, published in 1961.
Fundamentally, Romanization systems aren’t for English, any more than they’re for the benefit of Spanish or German or Basque. They’re for the benefit of the speakers of the language being Romanized.
Are you sure? I’ve got an early edition and I think he used Koran–could it have been changed in a reprint?
I remember it striking me as odd when he had Jubal Harshaw quote from it, using the “Q” spelling. Of course, I haven’t read it in years, perhaps decades, but it sticks in my mind. I’ll admit I could have conflated something, and am willing to stand corrected. But I have seen the “Q” spelling other places over the years.
Remember that Quran/Koran is an Arabic word that we’re trying to transliterate into English. There really isn’t a “correct” English spelling any more than spelling your name in Arabic. When you transliterate a word, you use what sounds are available in the other language to get the closest pronunciation possible.
Sometimes, the people who speak the other language can’t even hear the difference between various sounds. A good example is the “L” vs. “R” sound in Japanese. And, if you look at the various words in Japanese that are transliterated from English, you’ll see some very strange attempts of trying to pronounce various English word.
There are similar issues in Hebrew too: Chanukah vs. Hanukah vs. Hanukkah vs. Chanuka, etc. In Hebrew, there are two different “T”, “S”, “K”, and “H” sounds. Plus, there are two different ways to pronounce the sound we transliterate as “CH” although “KH” would be a better transliteration of it. Heck, there were even two different ways of pronouncing the two different silent letters. Even most Hebrew speakers have lost those distinctions. You have to listen to a Yemeni speak Hebrew to get all the varieties of sounds.
The “Q” is suppose to represent what you could call a softened “K”. Maybe like “Kh” which is a bit closer to the actual pronunciation.
As English becomes more popular in other countries, many of the native speakers find better ways to transliterate their words into English than have been traditionally done. For example, back in the early 1970s, the Chinese started insisting that Beijing was the better transliteration of their capital city over the more commonly used Peking.
Back when Muammar Kaddafi was in the news regularly, somebody compiled a list of all the different ways it was transliterated. The list ran into the dozens.
Why?
False. Alessan got it right above. In Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, the sound is a voiceless uvular plosive (a.k.a. unvoiced uvular stop). “Uvular” refers to the point of articulation for this sound–all the way in the back of the mouth. The voiceless velar stop /k/ is articulated further forward, at the velum (soft palate), and that’s the difference between them. By the way, uvula literally means ‘little grape’. In Latin they used uva ‘grape’ to refer to a swollen uvula, so a normal one is a “little grape.”
I don’t know what anyone means by the term “soft” in phonetics. Different laypeople use it to mean different things, but it isn’t a term defined or used in phonetics.
The digraph <kh> can represent different sounds:
The voiceless velar fricative /x/ (also spelled <ch> by Yiddish speakers). As in “/x/anukkah” (Yiddish pronunciation of ח and כ).
The voiceless uvular fricative /χ/. As in Israeli Hebrew pronunciation of ח and כ.
Or the aspirated voiceless velar plosive /kʰ/. Sort of like in “backhand” or the initial k in “kick”—but in English it isn’t phonemic; in Hindi it’s a phoneme of its own.
I’m being a stickler for precise transcription of phonetics because in every phonetics thread here, I see confusion arising between people because of ad hoc transcription methods, where a symbol that means one thing to one person means something totally different (or nothing at all) to another person. That’s why I urge adoption of the International Phonetic Alphabet. It’s fairly easy to learn, very systematic, and all the symbols are there to be copied & pasted. Webster’s and similar dictionaries use a dumbed-down system for the general public to transcribe English sounds, but I believe Dopers are a higher caliber of intellect that can handle IPA and would benefit from it a lot.
Consonant chart
Vowel chart
Table of English sounds
Table of international sounds
It took me a long time, but I just finished T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which was the source of Lawrence Of Arabia. Throughout the book, Lawrence uses various spellings for the same words.
I’m not much of a stickler for other people’s spelling in English, and I’m much less worried about other people’s spelling in transliterated Arabic. OK? O’qay? 'K?
Is there a similar reason why people started using q for k for Hebrew? Drive around Israel, and you find signs with mutant spellings like “Welcome to Petah Tiqwa” and such. I think I remember someone saying something about how one was for kuf and one was for kof, but they’re both said the same. 
I mean, really, what’s wrong with “Petach Tikva”?
Why do you think there’s any such thing as a “correct” spelling for a word that’s transliterated from an entirely different alphabet?
There is such a thing as using the closest possible phonetic analogs.
I think it started around the same time everyone started misspelling catsup.
Historically, Q and ק qof are descended from the same ancient Semitic letter. You can even see the family resemblance. In ancient Hebrew—and still today in Mizrahi pronunciation—ק has the uvular pronunciation, distinct from the velar כ.
Likewise K and כ kaf are directly related. The two pairs of letters match up exactly.
I mean, really, what’s wrong with one-to-one correspondence (where possible)?
Because ancient Hebrew, specifically, is studied by many scholars in many settings, there is a standardized transliteration used by academics. That includes q vs k, but also left-leaning* apostrophe for alef and right-leaning* apostrophe for ayin (both “silent” letters), and different symbols for the different s-sounds, etc.
Israel does not seem to have standardized transliterations the way that China has.
Hey - I’m working on it.
Last year I did a translation job for the Israeli Yellow Pages, transliterating every single town and street name in the country (possibly the most tedious work I’ve ever done). Seeing as there isn’t an accepted transliteration for many of these names, I just decided to go with what felt right.
I’m proud to say that I didn’t use a single Q. I hope it catches on.