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2004-01-09 Home Front

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Posted by Dan Darling 2004-01-09 12:20:09 AM|| || Front Page|| [1 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Family Affair? One could mispell Albanna with Elbanah? I say potAto, you say potato.

Posted by john 2004-1-9 10:50:17 AM|| 2004-1-9 10:50:17 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 Looking at transliterated Arabic, you have to look at the consonants, rather than the vowels. The root (LBN) is modified by which consonants they hang on it. So Elbanah and Albanna are likely both variant spellings of the same name, as is al-Banna, al-Bannah, or even ul-Bonno.

A -> E shifts with dialect. The E is more prevalent the further west you go. Complicating matters is the fact that there are more consonants in the Semitic languages than there are in the Indo-European. H's are particularly awful; there are a couple variants that we'd represent with an H or a KH that actually sound like the speaker is choking. That's why you'll sometimes see al-Ghamdi, other times al-Hamdi. But el-Ghamidi's a valid transliteration, too.

Linguistics is not pretty...

Posted by Fred 2004-1-9 11:00:09 AM|| 2004-1-9 11:00:09 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 That transliterated root would be (BNN), the L of course being part of the definite article (al-). And surely al-Ghamdi (with a ghayn, a laryngial consonant a long, long way from an H sound) cannot be transliterated al-Hamdi, except in error. Al-Hamdi is itself a not uncommon name. Finally, al-Ghamdi could become el-Ghamdi, but not el-Ghamidi.

Posted by Anonymous 2004-1-9 3:14:34 PM|| 2004-1-9 3:14:34 PM|| Front Page Top

#4 Not being an Arabic speaker, I couldn't say for sure, but...

Going on transliterations from the news services is shakey. There's only one N in Elbaneh - should there be two, as in Albannah? And we've seen the GH -> H transliteration here a few times, the same name from different sources. Al-Ghamdi has also been rendered El-Ghamidi.

Posted by Fred 2004-1-9 5:09:55 PM|| 2004-1-9 5:09:55 PM|| Front Page Top

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