Turkey seeks to officially change spelling of name in English | Hacker News Reader

Turkey seeks to officially change spelling of name in English

ekathimerini.com

20 pointsokasaki38 comments

It's not really up to Turkey [or Türkiye] how the English language spells their country's name, is it? Any more than it's England's* business how Turkish speakers spell İngiltere

*[other English speaking countries are available]

Do you say "Burma" or "Myanmar"? There are many who deliberately use the former despite the latter being the official spelling in English.

Indeed, by choosing one or the other, you could be implicitly taking a position on that country's internal affairs .. even if you aren't aware of the issue.

Recently there's been a lot of support to use "Kyiv" instead of "Kiev".

Almost everyone now uses "Beijing" instead of "Peking", excepting a few cases.

"Bombay" or "Mumbai"? "Calcutta" or "Kolkata"? (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_renamed_places_in_Indi... .)

Do you refer to the city in New Mexico as "Hot Springs" or "Truth or Consequences"? (Or as "T or C")?

There's quite a few examples I could come up with, which means it's not that uncommon. And you see uptake depends on many factors.

Burma/Myanmar unfortunately has more scrutiny because it's a current political issue. Some see the new name as associated with the current military government. The US officially calls the country Burma (e.g., CIA World Factbook: https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/burma/ )

There was also Cambodia/Kampuchea, with the latter name associated with the Khmer Rouge regime.

> the government will be formally requesting the use of “Turkiye” instead of the anglicized “Turkey” in all international forums.

It seems that it absolutely is something that a nation can request and other nations should comply with - unless... Is there some controversy? I mean, the timing of this request makes one think that perhaps it is a negotiating tactic with allowing NATO expansion.

It's not like they're gonna try to get US courts to force you to use the new name. Generally what happens is they ask all the international institutions like UN to refer to them as Türkiye, then the media might pick up on it, so you'll see the new name used more and more often, until at some point it maybe catches on in casual speaking.

Miss Manners says, the way you say somebody's name is, the way they tell you to say it. So in that vein, it would be boorish to object.

In that case, the people of Deutschland would like a word.

I don't believe the German government (nor most of the German people) has told us to use a different word in English, so Miss Manners' advice doesn't apply.

Iran was known as Persian until 1935. “Iran” is the Persian word for the country, “Persia” comes to us via Greek.

For some further context: “Persian” is the preferred term in English for the language spoken by most of the people of Iran. “Farsi” is the name of that language in that language.

There is a language institute that manages formal rules (like French) and they prefer to keep the long association in western sources with the name “Persia” over a more native name — “farsi” is the Arabized form of the older “parsi”. This change is due to Arabic not having a p sound.

"Dutch" people who live in "Holland" know that all too well.

Holland being only one province of the Netherlands, or the Low Countries as it’s termed in multiple tongues including its own, and holland meaning highland , right ? Lol

Is it still pronounced like the bird? I've been reading and speaking American English all my life and would not know how to pronounce Turkiye. The last three letters are in a combination that is both unfamiliar and difficult to figure out.

Yeah, seeing this for the first time, my brain wants to say "turk-aye". Hopefully someone can chime in if that's correct.

In Turkish the /ü/ is like a French /u/ in the word "tu" so super round and front. The /r/ is flapped like in Spanish, and for the rest you just pronounce it how it looks. There are three syllables: tür-ki-ye. Turkish orthography is very good.

Unfortunately I'm not familiar with French or Spanish, so now I'm more confused and think that I may have been pronouncing Turkey wrong all along.

Which languages are you familiar with? I can potentially give examples in those.

American English. I have tried to learn others but I have failed each time.

Ok, that makes it more difficult. For /ü/ make the sound "ooh" and then push your lips forward. For the /r/ try saying /tülkiye/ with /l/ and then note where your tongue hits the roof of your mouth. Say it again and move your tongue back a bit. That's the best I can do with a written description, you could also try listening to the song "Ölürüm Türkiyem" on YouTube ... Yaren Doğan has a fun version.

> That's the best I can do with a written description, you could also try listening to the song "Ölürüm Türkiyem" on YouTube ... Yaren Doğan has a fun version.

Hearing it would probably be best for me. Hopefully I'll remember to check that out later when I'm home. Thanks.

Just asked my gf who is arab and they pronounce it Turk-e-yah

That means we'd have to change the name of the bird too, to keep up. ;)

Falsehoods programmers believe about country names?

1. Countries have a single unique name that identifies them.

2. Any name that identifies them has a single unique spelling.

There are 85 ways to spell hummus.

Alternatively, just 1: حمص

haha, yeah, I just meant in English.

ح م ص

A while back I tried to learn the arabic letters. Let me try to guess.

ha - Meem - Sheen (HMS)

Close, ha-meem-sad

If it was ha-meem-sheen, it would be pronounced "Hummush"

What’s the background? The article only states the desire, but does it in some way reflect better it’s native spelling? It doesn’t seem to change its pronunciation.

Turkish Airlines has a publicity campaign going on where on every flight there is a video of foreigners trying to pronounce Türkiye. I think most of them are actors, but all of them pronounce it differently (and not like Turkish speakers would), mostly it comes out like /töğkiyey/. In any case it doesn't matter too much, write Türkiye say Turkey, English is pretty flexible with spelling.

I did see Erdogan's worst fears come true just a couple days ago in a Youtube survey that was likely Google translated from English to German: https://postimg.cc/PCfv6NZb

Or who knows, maybe Saudi Tourism - who I'm pretty sure are behind the survey - knew what they were doing.

So, the animal “turkey” is called “peru” in Portuguese…

I just thought I’d put that out there, since we are implicitly dealing with disambiguating place and animal names.

Portukale is, of course, the name for “orange”, the fruit, in both Turkish and Greek and occasionally Russian

It's about time they corrected the spelling. Türkiye makes much more sense than confusing it with a rather stupid bird native to North America.

Turkiye has much bigger problems on its hands than how the rest of the world spells their name

One reason I want to see requests like this basically instantly and unquestionably accepted is because it prevents these minor issues from overshadowing the important issues the rest of the world is trying to help Turkiye deal with. It's a message of "of course, whatever you need -- we side with the people of Turkiye" that helps build cred when we go back and say "now about that Armenian genocide ..."

The article does not clarify how one pronounces Turkeiyueiuriwurouuuuuu

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