# Posted 7:38 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

THE TRUTH ABOUT AL QAA'IDA: Ever since advertising my minimal knowledge of Arabic, the demands have been piling up for an explanation of one of the most perplexing aspects of the War on Terror: Why do some people spell 'al Qaida' with an 'i', whereas others spell it with an 'e', as in 'al Qaeda'?

To ensure a definitive answer, I decided to ask Harvard linguistics impresario CH for an answer. (Asking him was a good idea, since I would've given you a wrong answer otherwise.) So here goes:

The middle syllable of 'Qaida' is a long 'e', which most linguists write out as 'i'. CH speculates that the alternate spelling 'al Qaeda' emerged because experts in Persian (of whom there are many) prefer to write out long 'e' as 'e'.

Now, if one is going to invest the effort in understanding how to spell the name of the terrorist organization founded by Mr. bin Laden, one may as well learn how to pronounce it as well. First comes the 'al', meaning 'the'. Most people seem to know that this part is pronounced like the first syllable in the word 'olive' and not like the first name of Mr. Gore.

It's the 'Qaeda' that most people get wrong. Usually, it gets pronounced either 'al KAY-da' or 'al KY (rhymes with 'sky')-da'. Both are wrong for the same reason: they assume that there are two syllables in the word, not three. Actually, it's more like 'al KAA-i-da'.

The double 'a' is very important. In Arabic, a 'long' vowel actually has to sound longer than a short one. When writing out Arabic words in English, one indicates the presence of a long vowel either by doubling the vowel or putting a horizontal bar over it.

Now what about this whole 'Q'-instead-of-'K' business? Well, in Arabic there are two letters that have a 'K' sound, but one of them is aspirated, which means that a burst of air comes out along with the sound. Sometimes this gets written out as 'kh' instead of 'q' because the 'sound' of 'h' is really just an aspiration.

Finally, we come back to the long 'e' that started this whole discussion in the first place. There is actually an invisible consonant which precedes it, but which is unpronounceable in English. The letter is called 'ayin' in Arabic and sounds sort of like someone clearing their throat. When written in English, ayin becomes an apostrophe.

So, in the final analysis, the most precise way to write 'al Qaida' is actually 'al Qaa'ida'. (Of course, you don't have to capitalize the 'Q' since there are no capital letters in Arabic.)

If you've read this far, you'll probably also want to know why 'Taliban' also gets spelled as 'Taleban'. As CH points out, 'Taliban' is actually a Persian or Dari word, not an Arabic one (although there is an Arabic cognate for it which also means 'students'). And since long 'e' is written as 'e' when transliterating Persian, the proper spelling is 'Taleban'. However, English speakers are more likely to pronounce the long 'e' correctly if it is transliterated as 'i' in this context.

And since Kevin asked: There is no good reason for American newspapers to drop the 'al from 'al Qaeda' in order to save space in headlines. No Arabic newspaper would do that.
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