Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Qatari Money


The currency here is the Qatar Riyal. Now one of the problems is that Riyal is pronounced it would seem, either riyal or real ... not quite sure if there is one way that is more correct than the other, and also not actually sure whether what "we" hear as reals is just a bad pronunciation. At the end of the day as long as notes are being handed back and forth, everyone seems happy!

BTW there are roman numerals on the reverse side of the notes but that wouldn't look anywhere as good if the photo showed them now would it! Just to add to your confusion (and to see if you can work this out) a 1 is a 1, but the angled 0 is a 5 and the dash/dot thing is a 0... got it? So the notes from the bottom are 1, 5, 10, 50, 100... there is also a 500 but we don't see many of them as we are not wealthy... hhmmm then again we don't see many coins either... does that mean we are actually middle class!

I suppose now is as good a time as any to mention another pronunciation. Qatar is most definitively pronounced CutTa, and the people (and Riyals for that matter) are Qataris which seems to come out as Cuttaries (a bit like cutlery without the "L"). Now this of course isn't as simple as it all sounds because when a Qatari says Qatar there is actually some little strange guttural thing going on in the middle.

At the end of the day it is Qatar far more like CutTa than anything sounding like a guitar, and CutTaries don't sound like guitar players at all... as far as Riyals or Reals... your guess is as good as mine!

No comments: