Every person that has ever played Scrabble knows there are precious few words in the English dictionary that does not have a letter U immediately following a letter Q. Furthermore, any respectable Scrabble player has memorized or at least has a sheet of those handy Q without the letter U words hanging around just in case the player experiences the most unfortunate event of obtaining a Q without a U. (Especially at the end of the game.)
As a side note, my long standing role when playing Scrabble is to take 15 minutes deliberating over my letters to come up with a 3 or 4 letter word that values a whole 4 points and then strategically place them so that the letters sets up the board for all the other players to utilize the triple word scores. It’s my place in this game and I have learned to embrace this about myself. I am sure there is a metaphor in here somewhere but it eludes me now.
Anyhoo, every time I see the word Qatar, I think, “What the hell? Where is the letter U?”
In Arabic languages a Q without a U seems to be a fairly common place occurrence. It appears to me, that the letter Q is a much more commonly used letter in Arabic languages vs English. I wonder if there is a special Scrabble edition for the Arabic languages where the Q tiles have a less score value because they are used more often. Now there is something for the company that owns the rights to Scrabble to ponder. They could do also so a special Hawaiian version with only 16 letters, but then I digress…again.
Today I am flying on Qatar Airways with my trusty traveling buddy, the lovely Ms. Laura and so far, it’s been an extremely pleasurable experience. (I’ll blog about that later on – Qatar, the best cheap seats ever!)
Over the years, I have heard people pronounce Qatar in different ways. I’ve heard Qua tar (because we have been so conditioned all of our lives in the USA to add the U after the Q). I’ve heard Water pronounced as Cutter. I personally had been pronouncing it at Ka Tar with the emphasis on Ka so that it rhymes with guitar.
When the Lovely Ms. Laura and I were sitting on the tarmac at JFK Intl Airport, waiting for takeoff, the flight attendant made an announcement over the loud speaker to thank us for traveling on Qatar Airways. Ms. Laura and I both looked at each other and said (in stereo) ‘Ohhhh, That’s how you say it!’ and we giggled because it’s a silly thing to get excited about but now we are in the know. It was repeated several times during the safety instructions and everyone that worked for Qatar airways pronounced it the same way.
I am now going to do the big reveal!!! . Drum roll please!
I am happy to announce that Qatar is pronounced as Cat Tar.
TA DA!!
There you have it!
I learned something new today!
