Transliteration of ق

losilmer

losilmer

Senior Member
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Spanish
It has always called my attention the reason why I see the letter "Q" and "q" in words from Arabic. Examples, Qatar, Aqaba, Qumram, Quram, Iraq, etc.
Why is this letter used and not K, k? Can anyone explain this? I suppose that this is a preference coming from Arab countries. Please, clarify.



Moderator note: This thread is moved from the English Only forum.
 
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    • sdgraham said:
    Note also the common spelling of Koran.
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    However the Koran is also often spelled Qur'an. The reason is because, in arabic, there are two different sounds that non-arabic speakers tend to pronounce as K. One is the simple K/Hard-C-sound that we have in English and Spanish. The other is is linguistically called a voiceless uvular stop and is far, far back in the throat. So because these are technically to different sounds, they are properly transcribed as K and Q depending on the word. Note that Kuwait would never be pronounced/written Quwait because it is the same k-sound we use.
     
    Just like any other living language spoken over a wide region, Arabic phonology is not consistent from one end to the other. Although written with the same Arabic letter, the dialectal or regional pronunciation varies from the Modern Standard Arabic pronunciation /q/, such as /k/, /g/, or even /dʒ/ (source: Wiki article on Arabic qaf).

    Now take these variations and transliterate it into another language; not an easy task! Some would take the regional pronunciation and use the letter with the closest phoneme. Others would use the letter traditionally used as the equivalent regardless of pronunciation. And then others will use the letter with the closest phoneme for the standardized pronunciation. Hence you have Gaddafi, Qadafi, Kadafy, and many more.

    If we were all asked to write in IPA a few everyday English words, I wouldn't be surprised to see differences in transliteration. Publishing houses and news agencies have style guides so that the spelling of foreign names and words is standardized and consistent within their documents.
     
    My perception is also that the actual "Qaaf" sound seems to sound different in different dialects. And I'm not talking about replacements of the "Qaaf" with "G" etc but instead the quality, hardness or tone of the actual "Qaaf" seems to vary in different dialects. Is this something others notice?
     
    Frankly, I've only noticed that in Egypt it can be softer than it is elsewhere - as if the sound does not come from far enough back in the throat (the same actually applies to 3ain). Otherwise, I personally don't see much difference.
     
    losilmer said:
    It has always called my attention the reason why I see the letter "Q" and "q" in words from Arabic. Examples, Qatar, Aqaba, Qumram, Quram, Iraq, etc.
    Why is this letter used and not K, k? Can anyone explain this? I suppose that this is a preference coming from Arab countries. Please, clarify.
    Click to expand...

    As mentioned, Q & K are quite distinct in Arabic, as opposed to English where they are almost the same in most cases.

    So it's only natural that when being transliterated by Arabs, or by people who at least speak Arabic, then they'd be transliterated as separate letters. Older transliterations done by orientalists with very poor understanding of Arabic tend to just use K for both.
     
    It's intersting to note that in several European languages, in particular Spanish, Koran or Quran is spelled CORAN, with a "C". (El Corán). (There's a reason for this: the letter "K" does not exist in Spanish and the letter "Q" can only be followed by the letters "u+e or i").

    Not to get too technical or far afield: CORAN was also the spelling in English some centuries ago, or at least, it was an alternate spelling.

    Going back even further to early Medieval times, the Koran was actually spelled ALCORAN, as if the AL was part of the word, and not the definite article Alef Lam. So you would get things like The Alcoran and, in Spa. El Alcoran. (One wonders how they ever translated the Koran if they weren't even aware of this rudimentary error.)
     
    Abu Rashid said:
    As mentioned, Q & K are quite distinct in Arabic, as opposed to English where they are almost the same in most cases.
    Click to expand...

    They are the same in all cases in English, it's just that English has adopted the Latin spelling convention of rendering /kw/ as "qu". This hasn't always been the case; "queen", for example, in Old English was spelt "cwen". After the Normans invaded things changed a little.

    Interestingly, the letter K is descended from the Phoenician letter kaph (picture) and the letter Q from Phoenician qoph (picture), respective equivalents of kaf and qaf in Arabic.
     
    Tracer said:
    The Alcoran and, in Spa. El Alcoran. (One wonders how they ever translated the Koran if they weren't even aware of this rudimentary error.)
    Click to expand...
    This still occurs quite frequently in English transliterations of Arabic words, al-Qaa3idah for instance, is always rendered with the Arabic article as part of the word, even if preceded by "the".
     
    ق is only g in some dialects. The standard pronunciation is a voiceless uvular plosive.
     
    From what I've read, in classical Fusha ق is pronounced as qh (somewhat similar to خ and غ but using the back of the tongue instead of being in the throat. It was its deviation towards ك, which is a little further down the throat, which caused its pronunciation to become 'q' by some people; and it's deviation toward غ, which is further back in the mouth at the top of the throat without using the tongue, which caused its pronunciation to change to 'g' by some people. It's also the deviation of ق towards q/k and the deviation of Dhammah 'u' to an 'o' which has given birth to the spelling "Koran" for قرآن.

    You can kind of hear the sound which is more correct in this recitation of Surah Qhaf/Qaf (Surah 50), which is named after the letter:
    [Video link removed by mod as per Forum Rule#4]
     
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    sb70012: In light of this question here and your other recent thread in the IIL Forum discussing the same topic, here is a list of few relevant threads which might be helpful:
    As mentioned in the threads listed above, while the distinction between غ and ق might not have remained in certain dialects of Irani Persian (and Arabic), it is still generally present in Standard Arabic, Dari/Afghani Persian, and other regional languages like Urdu, Pashto, etc.

    Examples from Forvo illustrating the difference in pronunciation of the two letters:
     
    (I was hoping others would contribute their opinions. However, since there haven't been any responses yet, I thought I would at least respond so it doesn't seem like your question was ignored.)

    The transliteration might depend on your audience. However, the classical pronunciation would be Baaqirii. Other examples could be قاسمی - Qaasimii and فاروقی - Faaruuqii.

    Arabic-speaking forum members will hopefully be able to provide further assistance!
     
    That's really a question for the Persian language forum and not the Arabic one, but in the interest of responding - as usual there are a number of possible transliterations. Something like Bâqeri or Bâqiri or Bāqiri would be typical for academic transliteration of Persian, indicating that the a there is a back a (represented by alif) and not a front a (represented by... fathe? not sure what it's called in Persian actually). For a less academic transliteration, Bagheri or maybe Baqeri would be preferable I think - Bagheri since it represents the actual pronunciation of the qaaf by many Persian speakers here.
     
    losilmer said:
    It has always called my attention the reason why I see the letter "Q" and "q" in words from Arabic. Examples, Qatar, Aqaba, Qumram, Quram, Iraq, etc.
    Why is this letter used and not K, k? Can anyone explain this? I suppose that this is a preference coming from Arab countries. Please, clarify.
    Click to expand...
    This “Q” doesn’t exactly make the K-sound. The Q is used for a sound that doesn’t exist in English. It’s like a K, but pronounced from the deepest part of your mouth. So Q and K are used to transcribe different sounds. Q is used for a sound that doesn’t exist in English and K is used for the unaspirated K-sound just as it’s pronounced in English skip.
     
    I'm
    Tracer said:
    It's intersting to note that in several European languages, in particular Spanish, Koran or Quran is spelled CORAN, with a "C". (El Corán). (There's a reason for this: the letter "K" does not exist in Spanish and the letter "Q" can only be followed by the letters "u+e or i").
    Click to expand...
    The letter K does exist in Spanish. However, it is only used for foreign loanwords which are spelt with K in their original languages. Note that according to current rules, ك is transcribed as K in Spanish and ق is transcribed as a Q by itself, without a U.
    Tracer said:
    Going back even further to early Medieval times, the Koran was actually spelled ALCORAN, as if the AL was part of the word, and not the definite article Alef Lam. So you would get things like The Alcoran and, in Spa. El Alcoran. (One wonders how they ever translated the Koran if they weren't even aware of this rudimentary error.)
    Click to expand...
    It might seem like an error at first sight, but there is actually a reason behind it. The usage of the definite article in Arabic and Romance languages is very different. In Arabic, the definite article is almost always stuck to a noun, whereäs in Romance languages, it is different. Since الـ was almost always stuck to a noun in Arabic, to a medieval Romance-language speaker, it would have made more sense to just loan the noun with the article. Just to give you an example, take a look at how “I am going to give you this paper.” is said in Arabic and Spanish.
    Arabic: سأعطيك هذه الورقة. (Notice how the article الـ is used before ورقة (the word for “paper”)?)
    Spanish: Te voy a dar éste papel. (Notice how there is no article used?)
     
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