Taliban Taleban.....

[Bbbananas]

Ever since 9/11 the Taliban have been prominent in the news. For the last 7 years all media have spelt in with an 'i'. I have noticed in the last few months that now a lot of newspapers, sky news etc have switched to spelling it with an 'e' as in Taleban.

Both spellings are correct - but why switch all of a sudden?
Are the broadsheets trying to be superior to the tabloids? Are they just bored? Are they trying to catch people out? Or am I just strange for noticing it & wondering about it in the first place?

[Bbbananas]

It's just the same with Yogurt and Yoghurt.

There's no wonder foreigners become confused.

[sqad617]

Or Polish and polish.

[Bbbananas]

To be or not to B... that is the question.

Sorry - I'm really going off piste now. I think it was the double G&T I had in the sun at lunchtime. I blame Keith.

[jno]

when there are different spellings of words, most media have their own 'house style', just for the sake of consistency. Sometimes they change it to get nearer to the original (which in this case is Arabic). That's why they decided years ago that Beijing was closer to the real pronunciation than Peking (and Peiping before that). But why some of them have changed now, I don't know; there's no difference in English pronunciation.

[rinkins]

Don't make me think about yoghurt pleeeaaasseee.......LOL

Donut/Doughnut??

[Bbbananas]

Strawberries rinkins.... strawberries. In crevices nooks & crannies.

[Gromit]

The word means 'students' or 'learners'.

How you spell it depends on which language you translate it from. The BBC have always prefered the spelling from Persian which is Taleban. The Americans prefer to translate from Arabic and it comes out as Taliban and most other British media follow the American way of doing things.
The Times uses Taleban, and the Telkegraph uses Taliban. Both are correct.

The BBC have always prefered the spelling from Persian which is Taleban, see this example from BBC website in 1997
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/west_asia/370 21.stm