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Türkiye is the new official English-language name for the country
by guipsp 4y ago
Türkiye is the new official English-language name for the country
- unmole 4y agoThe umlaut says it's not English.
- int_19h 4y agoIt's the name that the country uses in its official communications in English, and expresses the desire to see the same name in English communications addressed to it.
- MonkeyClub 4y agoThey’re essentially throwing an identity tantrum on a global scale, while tip-toeing towards nationalism internally. This would be a laughable matter, were it not a sign of what’s coming.
- toast0 4y agoIn a world where we are asked to refer to people by their chosen names and pronouns rather than what they were asigned in the past, why should we not refer to a country by its chosen name? Especially if it's going through the proper channels to promulgate its name change?
- xxpor 4y agoIgnoring the political implications of the question for a second, if nothing else when people ask to be referred to by a different name, their chosen name is usually at least reproducible on the keyboards in common use. Most people in the US would have absolutely no idea how to type Ü, let alone İ. In addition, English speakers don't have [y], [c], or word-final [e] in their phoneme inventory.
- toast0 4y agoYeah, I fully expect people without easy access to u with umlaut to just write u (regardless of case), and those without easy access to capital dotted i, to just write a dotless capital I. And the pronunciation will be brutal, at least for the first few decades, but change is a process.
- ESTheComposer 4y agoSo being forced to call anyone by what they prefer is cool and encouraged, except when it comes to a country?
- vesinisa 4y agoPractically, yes, but Turkey is a sovereign country and it can ask the UN to call it in English whatever it likes. And indeed - they have requested that their official English-language name be now Türkiye. One of the stated reasons is that Turkey is homophonic with 'turkey' (the thanksgiving meal), which further has a connotation of 'lousy'. This is 100% real, their current leadership is a bit strange: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-61671913 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-61671913 Of course in reality people will keep on calling them Turkey in practical every day English. But the UN has a policy of honoring such requests by the country itself - probably to avoid meddling in politics.
- unmole 4y agoThe UN can pretend that it's English. Just like how it pretends Taiwan isn't a country. There's no reason why we should go along with it.
- vesinisa 4y agoExactly. It's politics, which can take a completely new direction on a whim of a dictator or a regime change. But language, as used in practice, changes much less rapidly.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- sofixa 4y ago> Just like how it pretends Taiwan isn't a country That's because it really isn't. It really should be, but a) they don't really claim to be one (until recently they officially claimed they're the "one and only" China, same as the PRC) and according to polls most people there support that status quo; b) nobody of note recognises them to be.. anything really. As far as most of the world, including the UN, are concerned, Taiwan is the losers of the Chinese Civil war that have some limited exceptions (like performing at Olympics). Contrast this with Kosovo who claim to be an independent country and are somewhat recognised.
- 4y ago
- zozbot234 4y agoIt has a umlaut and a dotted i in the uppercase version. Totally metal.
- zeckalpha 4y agoI encourage you to not read much from the New Yorker then!
- johnday 4y agoThis is a naïve take which I find über annoying. Maybe I'll tell my local café owner, Emily Brontë, about it.
- the_biot 4y agoI get your point, but the fact is these (except maybe for Brontë) commonly get spelled without the diacritics.
- pie_flavor 4y agoThat doesn't mean spelling them with the diacritics makes them not English.
- zarzavat 4y agoFrench was the official language of England for quite some time so English and French have a special relationship, and any of the French diacritics are acceptable in English. English also has native use of the umlaut mark for as diaeresis e.g. coördinate. For non-French diacritics, it is on a case-by-case basis. Most English speakers would accept ñ and even write it e.g "El Niño event". Nordic ø is questionable but would be accepted in place names. Phở is right out.
- johnday 4y ago> Most English speakers would accept ñ and even write it e.g "El Niño event" FWIW this may be true in the USA but in the UK and other non-NA English-speaking countries I don't think this holds.
- zarzavat 4y agoYou will definitely see jalapeños and such on UK food packaging. I just searched the bbc website for "jalapeño" and found this page [0] which uses both spellings (!). It also links to a page on "habañero" (sic) so yeah you can say that British familiarity with Ñ is somewhat of a mixed bag. [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/jalapeno_chilli https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/jalapeno_chilli
- bowsamic 4y agoIt’s a name, how can you tell if a name is “in English”?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jillesvangurp 4y agoISO is not in charge of the English language. I don't expect dictionaries to change any time soon just because ISO says so. Turkey has been the proper English translation for their country name since a very long time and it will be correct English for a long time. Of course, with English it is a bit unclear in any case who decides what is and isn't correct. Certainly not the Turkish government or ISO. What's next? The Germans insisting on Deutschland as the official ISO name (it's still Germany)? The Chinese insisting on using chines characters? I'm not sure why ISO did this. It sounds political to me. If you need place name translations, geonames is a decent data set: https://www.geonames.org/export/ https://www.geonames.org/export/ You can look up the correct translations and transliterations by iso country and language code. It still calls Turkey by its English name, as it should.
- anamexis 4y agoIn 2016, the country formerly known as The Czech Republic declared that its English name was now Czechia. This is now its official ISO name, how it shows up in the Geonames database, and how it is commonly referred to in places like news media.
- remedan 4y agoA small nitpick, the country isn't "formerly known as the Czech Republic". "Czechia" was adopted as the new official short name. The long name is still also correct.
- smcl 4y agoSo this is why it's good to pay attention to deeply nested HN threads. Because I didn't realise this was the case - media covered the "Czech Republic is now 'Czechia'" thing and my friend group are split about 80/20 (majority using "Czech Republic", inc. me). I'm glad to hear both are technically correct!
- anamexis 4y agoTo be completely fair, the context in which it's still called "The Czech Republic" is the same context that you would say "The Federal Republic of Germany"
- corrral 4y agoOfficial? Sure. Actual, in the English language name? No.
- bee_rider 4y agoI mean there's the official name, which has a canonical standard value and we can answer with an easy "yes" or "no." And then there's this fuzzy "actual English language" question about, which is pretty hard to answer, and verges on philosophical "what even is a language/what is a name?" wankery. I can't see how you give a simple yes/no answer to that.
- corrral 4y ago> I can't see how you give a simple yes/no answer to that. I'm looking into my crystal ball and seeing the ~0 people who will be able to remember the slightly different and alien-looking-to-English spelling, and the even smaller value of ~0 who will ever be bothered to use the umlaut.
- bee_rider 4y agoIf language is just decided by popular vote, somebody should tell the English that they are using English wrong -- there are many more Americans after all.
- corrral 4y agoWell—that's exactly the case, and that's why you see different usage guides and dictionaries for American English and British English. "Correct" usage, for values of correct that favor clarity for a given audience, does indeed differ substantially between American and British English, among many other variants and dialects. What has minimal effect is some international standards body trying to dictate usage. Today, and likely for a long time to come, if not indefinitely, "Turkey" is less distracting or confusing to practically any English-speaking audience one might choose, than the new thing. The new one's odd-enough looking (again, even just considering the letter order) and the old one enough entrenched that I expect the old form to be the better choice for communication in English for a long time.
- collegeburner 4y agoNo its not. This is not French, we don't have a governing body. And they def can't expect us to use a name with characters we can't even type. No way am I looking up to copypasta the name every time I need to use it.