Great Mysteries of our Time #93: SOLVED!

[Churchill]

I thought it was spelled "Wanted: Dead or Alive, but preferably Dead".

It actually says...

"Tonight, Gaddafi he sleeps with the fishes..."

[Paddy]

That says "ifahtaG"

[PRC1964]

It's spelt "Gathafi"

مُعَمَّر القَذَّافِي

[stek]

You can get a "near W" with "Уо"

Not really! In Russian a 'yo' is 'ё' - Russian for 'we' is 'Мы' which to me as a native English speaker sounds like 'mwee' or maybe a quick 'mooee'..

Ahh, now I see why u did! a 'u-ee' - hmm yes, I like it!! Cheers!!

Like a 'ю-и'?

[AtW]

He's prefer it was spelled "BulletProof".

HTH

[Paddy]

Surely thats a mere transliteration issue given that Arabic doesn't use the the Latin alphabet? Dabbling in Russian as I do, I see those all the time, Cyrillic translit differences. Like I've seen the Russian vowel 'ы' transliterated as 'i' or 'y' and the consonant 'ж' as 'zh' or 'z' or 'j'.

There are different translit systems that attempt to transliterate non-English sounds into Latin equivalents, but they don't really work that well, as in the example above, the Russian vowel 'ы' - to me I hear more as a slight 'wee' or 'wi' but any native Russian speaker would deny there's a 'w' sound in it at all.

Also cos of translit issues you wouldn't know for example that the Russian Christian names 'Boris' and 'Oleg' are actually pronounced 'Ba-REES' and 'Al-YEK' respectively. Translit can't cope with that sort of thing which I'm sure goes on in Arabic too.

Interesting topic!

You can get a "near W" with "Уо"

[Arturo Bassick]

No, that is his Welsh cousin.

[stek]

It's spelt "Gathafi"

Surely thats a mere transliteration issue given that Arabic doesn't use the the Latin alphabet? Dabbling in Russian as I do, I see those all the time, Cyrillic translit differences. Like I've seen the Russian vowel 'ы' transliterated as 'i' or 'y' and the consonant 'ж' as 'zh' or 'z' or 'j'.

There are different translit systems that attempt to transliterate non-English sounds into Latin equivalents, but they don't really work that well, as in the example above, the Russian vowel 'ы' - to me I hear more as a slight 'wee' or 'wi' but any native Russian speaker would deny there's a 'w' sound in it at all.

Also cos of translit issues you wouldn't know for example that the Russian Christian names 'Boris' and 'Oleg' are actually pronounced 'Ba-REES' and 'Al-YEK' respectively. Translit can't cope with that sort of thing which I'm sure goes on in Arabic too.

Interesting topic!

[NickFitz]

It's spelt "Gathafi"