Have we been misspelling Osama Bin Laden's name wrong for the last ten years?

No. There’s no proper translation of the Arabic alphabet into English letters; either is correct. Just like Koran and Quran.

@MyNewtBoobs I just just about to answer Yes for the very same reason!
Instead I’ll just give you a GA.

ʾUsāmah bin Lādin is probably the most accurate transliteration as Arabic is generally described as having a three-vowel system (excluding “e” and “o”). But there are many different transliteration systems for Arabic, some of which do use “o” and “e”. (The Arabic alphabet does not usually use vowels. It’s almost entirely consonants and it’s up to the reader to know which vowels go in which word).

I have often been confused about the sudden changes in translating Arabic words and names into English.

Kadafi was Kadafi for as long as I can remember. But suddenly in the news, he’s become Ghaddafi. The Koran turned into the Quoran or the Quo’ran. Osama is Usama. I know that there are different translations, but I don’t understand why the “official” translation used by the news services will just suddenly change.

I don’t know how we can “misspell” a name that isn’t an English-alphabet name in the first place.

The Arabic letter that comes at the beginning of Osama’s name is semi-analogous to the English letter O, at least in terms of how it’s used and pronounced generally speaking. But in Arabic, it really is like Ooh-Sama. Hence the U.

I should add that there is a scholarly convention for transliterating Arabic. By this convention the U is more correct, as is Q’uran over Koran and Qaddafi over Kaddafi or what-have you. Ghaddafi is most certainly NOT correct. The idea is that in Arabic there are letters which we denote in English using our letters or combinations thereof. In Qaddafi’s case, the “Q” letter is a sort of back-of-the-throught guttural “qa” sound. “Gh” is typically used to denote a kind of gargling noise—the letter “Ghayn” in Arabic.

I believe that it’s largely in defense of certain people with similar-sounding names who live in the White House.
In marketing we have the concept of the ‘evoked set;’ that is, ideas associated with a given word. One of the jobs of a marketer is to manage these associations. Previously, “Obama” and “Osama” were a mere letter apart, but it didn’t matter because one was a Senator and the other one was lurking in the collective subconscious, and apparently Pakistan. Now that they’re sharing screentime, pains are being taken to keep people from subconsciously lumping them together.

Is this question off topic? This is something that’s been bothering me. All the news people just up and changed the pronunciation of Pakistan overnight too.

It’s been “Pack-ih-stan” for as long as I can recall, but sometime this summer, reporters started calling it “Pock-eh-ston” It really gets on my nerves, for some reason. It especially bothers me when they pronounce other countries with -istan at the end the old way. Why singly out Pakistan with that new pronunciation and not the other “stan” countries.

Anyone have an answer?

The media has these things called Style Manuals. They kind of all agree how they are going to spell something so we readers aren’t confused. This standardization is used for foreign names that are not typically written with our alphabet. Khaddafi was originally spelled with a “Q” and was then changed to a “K” and has been switched back to a “Q.”

@keobooks Probably someone corrected one of the talking heads on his pronunciation, and the change went viral. English is rather singular in the way that she pronounces her vowels.

So really we should have fixed it at least 3 years ago. Ubama doesn’t look right, I guess we’ve had a lot of time to get used to the less correct Osama so now Usama doesn’t look right either.

@Nullo I call horse hockey. For those of us who don’t consign bits down the memory hole when it’s conveinent to score points, the CIA and FBI have utilized ‘Usama’ for his given name since way back. (UBL being the common shorthand in national security circles.)

@hiphiphopflipflapflop * shrugs * The concept is not inconsistent with the news media – the primary propagators of all of this terminology – and I learned about the evoked set from a rather nice textbook, and a former partner at Fleishman-Hillard. This doesn’t necessarily make me right, but I’d like you to know that I’m not just blowing smoke. There may be a more appropriate concept, but that’s what came to mind.
‘Course, when all you have is PR/Marketing, everything looks like a PR/Marketing problem.

@DominicX The Arabic alphabet does use vowels. It has three: ا و ي. The name “Osama” is أسامة – it has 2 vowel letters. Modern Standard Arabic has 6 vowel sounds.

@morphail, I think @DominicX was referring to fatha, dhamma and kasra.

It really does not make much of a difference. In English, vowels in unaccented syllables are represented with the schwa symbol, which is a kind of a grunt sound, and is usually represented in dictionary pronunciation keys as an e that has been rotated 180 degrees.

@quarkquarkquark I was referring to alif, waw, and ya. Are those not vowel letters?

That’s not so bad (and still under discussion in some circles). Anything trans-literated from from another alphabet is open. Anybody remember “Peking”?

Is this also how Bombay became Mumbai?

Osama Usama
Moslem Muslim
Chanukah Hanukah
Meshugah meshugga
Quran Koran Qur’an

And on and on. Arabic, Hebrew, and other languages do not use the same alphabet or work completely different than English, so how they are spelled in English is a little up for grabs. For a name I usually would go by how the individual prefers to spell his name in English, but as far as Bin Landen goes I really don’t give shit. I was still spelling Moslem Moslem, until I came to fluther where everyone uses Muslim. I asked someone who was Muslim what they prefer, and they said that Muslim was just the more modern way of writing it, but they didn’t care either way really. Not sure if that is how most Muslims feel.

@keobooks Oh, eye-ran drive me crazy. It’s Ee-ran. Remember a few years back when the Lebonese and Israelis were fighting with each other and the reporters could not pronounce hezbollah the same way? We certainly have enough Arab American citizens that we should be able to get these thing consistant and correct. But, then, when I lived in MI half the people said eye-talians, so why should I be surprised.

@JLeslie There’s also the rather antiquated “Musulman,” adapted from the Persian مسلمان, which opens up another, uglier can of worms: the translation of the translation.
Yeah, those Eye-talians, from Eytally. :D

@Nullo Never heard the Persian word (I assume you mean Farsi) you refer to. Is that supposed to be synonomous with Muslim?

@JLeslie I got ‘Persian’ from the Wiki article; I figured that they meant the region that the word came from, not the language. It is synonymous, yes, and is the root of the neo-Latin languages’ terms for ‘Muslim.’
You’ll sometimes see it used in older English-language works.

I used to say “Usama”, but transferred to “Osama” after constantly seeing that more. I guess now I can safely transfer back to “Usama”.—I also say “Qu’ran” not “Koran”. As far as Qaddhafi goes, forget it and just spell it phonetically——that’s the way it was translated anyways. Arabic goes by sounds, and that is what cases the trouble. Symbols don’t represent letters (for the most part).

@dxs

Additionally, a lot of people think that the “q” is simply the same sound as the “k”, but that’s not the case. Arabic differentiates between /q/ and /k/. /q/ is a uvular stop sound, which is very difficult to say for English-speakers and is usually approximated by “k” (because the sounds are similar), but /k/ is a velar stop, which is not the same thing as /q/. AFAIK, the name “Qaddafi” is spelled with the Arabic letter corresponding with the uvular stop sound and so it should be written with a “q”.

@DominicX I also think when a Q is written in English many make the sound of the English Qu. Even if the u is not present English speakers sometimes are compelled to say q as qu as we would pronounce it. So it is confusing and not natural phonetically to write the q, or to pronounce the qu as if the u is not there. I think?

For instance in Spanish quinto is pronounced kin-tow. An English speaker would want to say kwin-to. Not sure I am making sense.

It’s like my exboyfriends mom who speak Spanish used to say es-straw-ber-ry. She just had to verbally add the e on the front, because in Spanish typically words that begin with S actually begin with e. That alread long three syllable word she had to make into four syllables, because her mother tongue sort of demanded it.

@DominicX but what about the rest of the name?
I remember taking a sporcle quiz on all the ways to spell Qaddhafi, and there were over 20. I think I may even spell it more than one way, but I definitely always start with “Q”. Why? I don’t know.
and what does “afaik” mean?

One more time. Whatever vowel is placed in front of Osama, the pronunciation is the same. In English,and for all I know other languages, vowels in unstressed syllables are pronounced as a kind of grunt. The a in about, the e in bitter and the second o in cotton are all pronounced the same way. Schwa symbol

Osama garbage-bin Laden?

@zen Garbage-bin laden with Osama. :D