Qatar has been making its rounds recently as I’ve heard it mentioned in the news and have seen it in print several times over the past month or so. I write about Qatar for another blog and website (BLATANT SELF PROMOTION!!!) and traffic to both of these sites has increased dramatically; especially on the jobs blog where I have people asking me in the comments section if I can find them work out here (the answer is ‘no’, btw).
There was a recent 60 minutes segment on life in Qatar and a very interesting Radio 4 story relating to Qatar and the World Cup (which is, unfortunately no longer available to listen to). It seems that certain parts of the world are starting to take notice of this tiny country and publicity has been both good and perhaps not so good.
Anyway, I won’t get into the content of these pieces although I will say that the 60 minutes bit was slightly misleading and most statements should have been succeeded with ‘…if you are Qatari’ (ie Richest country in the world, if you are Qatari. Life couldn’t be better, if you are Qatari. Free education, if you are Qatari). And it really did turn a blind eye to the 1 million+ migrants doing pretty much all of the jobs that the Qataris don’t (won’t?) do like driving taxis, cleaning hotel rooms, working in restaurants and pumping petrol into all those shiny new 4x4s everyone drives.
It certainly made no mention of the labourers building this country, working outside in the sweltering heat, living in camps on the outskirts of town and earning a pittance, most of which they send back to family in their home countries.
Alas, that is another post all together but, judging by the comments on the 60 minutes page, I’m not the only one who feels this way.
At the end of the news story there was an entertaining piece about the pronunciation of ‘Qatar’, which is something I find quite interesting. ‘Qatar’ in Arabic begins with the letter ‘ق’, of which there is no equivalent sound in English. It is pronounced like the letter ‘K’ but much more guttural; you have to almost pretend there is a tube in your mouth and click your tongue at the back of your throat. I pronounce it, ‘Kuh-tar’ partly because this is what feels comfortable for me and partly because I don’t want to sound like a twat who’s trying too hard. A lot of people pronounce it ‘Cat-tar’, some say ‘Cut-ter’; I’ll let you decide how you want to say it when you finally come for a visit.
