Tammuz

Qur'an is the most appropriate spelling, though I prefer using Quran in English, and simply Koranen in Swedish (which is the Swedish word for it).

The Q is the transliteration to the Latin alphabet of the Arabic letter Qaf ( ق ), which is different from the Arabic letter Kaf ( ك ), which is usually translitterated to K in the Latin alphabet. That is why it is actually phonetically wrong to spell it Koran.

spin

I appreciate the desire for accuracy, but that isn't really the issue. In neither Swedish nor English is the phoneme represented by /q/: we simply don't use a uvular plosive in the array of sounds available to us. This is why we substitute the nearest sound, the velar plosive /k/, represented by "k" or "c" (hard) in English.

The word in Arabic is written with these sounds, )LQR)N, removing the attached article we have, QR)N, which is normally rendered in English as Koran, though other representations are possible, such as Qur'an, though as I've indicated the /q/ doesn't exist in English and can really only confuse people. However, it is usually only the English anal retentive approach to spelling that makes it difficult to accept that it can in fact be rendered in English different ways, just as one can with Mohammed/Muhammad etc. Even the word Arab starts with a sound in Arabic which is simply omitted in European versions of the word, for though an AIN has significance in Arabic, it can't even be found in European languages.


spin

jakejonesiv

Quite a few contributors have considerable skills and education in Biblical Greek. Perhaps a few less in Biblical Hebrew. Who is the resident scholar in "Qur'anic" Arabic on IIDB?

Jake Jones IV

MerryAtheist

I spell it "Bullshit". But usually just in my head.

Laura D.

The Bishop and Tammuz are correct. Koran is an acceptable (albeit, older) spelling. But Qu'ran is the closest accurate transliteration (leaving off the "al" definite article) and now preferred spelling. I doubt you will offend anyone of you stay with Koran. But you are certainly a bit more hip, a bit more modern if you go wtih the new-age accuracy of Qu'ran.

The word derives from a three letter verb (qara'a) that means (no surprise) to recite. Almost all arabic words derived from three letter root words. Arabic is fairly formulaic and if you know the forms, you can actually predict the meaning of various words. For example, KTB is the three letter root for the verb to write.

Okay, I've just spouted out way more information than you could possibly want. So I'll pipe down now.

God bless,

Laura

Doug Shaver

No. Nothing in English is official in any universal sense.

If you're working for a newspaper or other publication, there will be an in-house manual explaining that publicaton's preference in such matters. Other companies or other organizations (government agencies, for example) may have similar manuals for anything written under their purview. Unless you're working for one of those outfits, you have to make your own decision.

Cyril

Arabic makes a distinction between long and short vowels. The "a" is long.
So the accurate transliteration of Koran in Arabic is Qur'aan. Some write Qur'ân.

The apostrophe which is a glottal stop is not a problem. Instead of pronouncing the word as "Qu" and "raan", say first "Qur" then "aan". All letters have to be pronounced the Spanish way except the "q" which is one of the most difficult Arabic letter to pronounce.

chapka

To be clear:

What we're talking about is romanization, meaning mapping something from a non-Roman script into a Roman script. It's generally considered good practice to adopt one standard Romanization method, as has now been done with putonghua ("Mandarin") Chinese. The goal is to be able to represent words from the Romanized language the same way regardless of the Roman language represented, and so pronunciation in the speaker's native language is not usually a priority.

Chinese is a good example. Originally speakers of each Roman language tried to represent it using their own phonetic rules, so Beijing would be Peking in England, Pekin in France, Pecchino in Italy, and so on. However, China has a strong central government that was able to impose on its citizens an "official" Romanization, called Hanyu Pinyin. That's where we get "Beijing," which is now replacing the native spellings in every Roman language. It doesn't accurately represent a good native spelling in any European language, but it does have a pretty good one-to-one correspondence with Chinese phonemes.

It looks like the situation with Arabic is more complicated, probably because there's no central authority in the same way. Wikipedia has an interesting overview chart of how Arabic letters are treated in various romanization systems.

Cyril

I have noticed that most scholars use ALA-LC or DIN 31635.
Those systems are good for printed books. But they are not adapted to our PC keyboards.
On French keyboards you can easily show long vowels by putting a ^ on top of the letter. People using English keyboards have to duplicate them.

For emphatic letters some (especially Arabic speaking chatters) have devised a system that uses numbers instead of letters from our alphabet.