As you may or may not have read, I have a problem with Qatar. The first issue was already posted here: http://bitterbuffalo.com/2011/10/12/i-cant-believe-its-not-qatar/
More than anything though, the reason Qatar is bullshit is how we spell and pronounce it. Now I have never been to Qatar, but it appears they don’t pronounce it “Ka-tar” in Qatar, but more like “Gi-tar” or “Cutter.” So why is this a big deal?
Mainly because we are violating a fundamental tenet of English… Q is followed by U, and for no good reason. Note:
- They don’t pronounce it like we do, and even if they did, who decided what sound “Qa” makes? Somehow with Qantas (which is an acronym for Queensland and Northwest Territory Aerial services) we imply a “u” sound. So who made the rule that Qa says “ka.” We already have Ka and Ca for that, no?
- They don’t spell it like we do. They speak Arabic, which is a bunch of squigglies (no disrespect). They spell it قطر So why, if we are going to Anglicize it, do we need to do this?
- Even if we are trying to be sensitive and try to approximate what the Qataris do, why is Qatar so special. We could easily spell and pronounce Japan as Nippon, Germany as Deutschland, Italy as freaking Italia, Mexico as “Me-hico.” All really easy to say, spell, etc, but we don’t.
All I can think is that between the 2022 World Cup and this pronunciation thing, the Qataris have something on us.
This could be big. Now excuse me while I super-anonymize this blog for when the Qatari version of the Mossad comes looking.
