7 ms·

Off-topic: Do most people there prefer "Türkiye" or "Turkey?"

by blagie 4y ago

alex3305 4y ago
There was an official name change [1] to Türkiye. 1. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/2/un-registers-turkiye-as-new-country-name-for-turkey https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/2/un-registers-turkiye...
- blagie 4y ago
  I'm very well aware of that. Whenever I've been on the receiving end of a name change like that, I (and everyone I knew) found it obnoxious. However, cultures differ. Turkey has a long history with name changes, and has been rather aggressive about them. When it became "Turkey," the post office wouldn't deliver mail unless the new name was used. Likewise, the capital has gone through two names since "Byzantium." I was genuinely curious about local reaction. I have no idea, from the other end of the world, whether this was imposed by Erdogan as a crazy policy to everyone's annoyance, or whether it is wildly popular. I assume somewhere in between.
  - dkural 4y ago
    [flagged]
  - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
    They got fed up with Google search returning stuff about birds.
    - aendruk 4y ago
      Who is “they”?
- ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
  [flagged]
- msm_ 4y ago
  > Erdogan released a memorandum and asked the public to use Türkiye to describe the country in every language I wonder how that works. Does Eredrogan expect every country to write and say "Türkiye? Does it work the other way around - can Germany change their official name in Turkey/Türkiye to "Deutschland"?
  - boomboomsubban 4y ago
    >Does it work the other way around - can Germany change their official name in Turkey/Türkiye to "Deutschland"? Probably not in the same way, as Turkish is not a UN official language. They could request their name be changed in English, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, or Arabic though.
- numpad0 4y ago
  The problem is, the bird is supposedly named after the country, and that if the country had changed/clarified its name, so should the bird, against Turkish intent.
nextaccountic 4y ago
In some years, this will become a non-issue
- blagie 4y ago
  It will become a non-issue once all keyboards have a "ü" button. :) Which might not actually be that long.
  - Cyph0n 4y ago
    Why is everyone focused on the umlaut? If you don’t have the button, use a “u” and move on.
    - sk0g 4y ago
      The umlauted u is not just a u with some visual flair. "ue" instead would be a more accurate transliteration, but Tuerkiye looks... awkward.
      - Cyph0n 4y ago
        Got it, but I’m saying that using “Turkiye” is better than using “Turkey”.
    - blagie 4y ago
      Things like text search and exact string matching. As minor as it might sound, if 199/200 countries work in your system, capitalism dictates that below a certain business size, the logical thing is often to just ignore the one country and move on. These things have odd cascading effects.
      - msm_ 4y ago
        I have good news for you - text search for non-ascii version of latin characters like ü is a long solved problem. That's because even in non-english speaking countries some people don't bother with diacritics, or they don't have a correct layout at that point, or the text is in source code and has to be ASCII, etc. You can try that now - my browser highlights Türkiye when I search for Turkiye.
tradertef 4y ago
As a Turk, I do not trust people who are using Turkiye in English. That is virtue signaling which is saying they are populist, nationalist etc. etc. I also find the change idiotic at the least though I understand why they did it.
- macintux 4y ago
  When working with people of different nationalities and ethnicities I emphasize trying to pronounce their names correctly. Why is this different?
  - jordigh 4y ago
    Because it's a nationalistic thing to insist that all languages spell your country's name in the script and spelling of the source language. It's a stupid move by the Erdogan government to get people to stop thinking about türkiye birds when they think of the Turkey country. Other countries get by just fine. Germany, Alemania, Deutschland. Mexico, Messico, Méjico. Japan, Nippon, 日本. China, Zhōngguó, 中国. Every country gets by getting called different things in different languages. But Turkey insisting on the spelling just because they don't want to be associated to türkiye birds, where the birds are literally named after the country, is a silly move designed to stir nationalistic pride for their near totalitarian government.
    - pcardoso 4y ago
      One funny thing is that in Portuguese the word for turkey (the bird) is Perú… also the same word as the South American country. Turkey is Turquia though…
      - thaumasiotes 4y ago
        > Turkey is Turquia though… The bird is named after a series of misconceptions, with different results in different places. The country is named after the Turks; you expect it to be the same everywhere.
  - 4y ago
jordigh 4y ago
Erdogan wants English to use the Turkish spelling because he's tired of English speakers thinking of the bird when they're talking about the country. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MyNaymeIs https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MyNaymeIs The funny thing is that through a bunch of funny historical accidents, the bird is literally named after the country, so we could just spell the birds türkiyes too.
- foronetimeonly1 4y ago
  Why do people need an alternative spelling to a country whose name is spelled in a latin alphabet? Should we spell England, wing-lunge for fun?
- GauntletWizard 4y ago
  In honor of Erdogan, I'm going to start calling it Turkiye. The bird, not the country.
- sillytr 4y ago
  Why not be more explicit? Turks call India "Hindi-stan". Which in Turkish is "Turkey-the-bird-stan". Including the Persian etymology would literally make it "Land of the Turkeys." If Modi wanted to pick a fight with Turkey it would have made for an entertaining UN session.
mrtksn 4y ago
I don't like using Turkiye in English, it sounds out of place to me. I'm native Turkish speaker.
ikeserbestian 4y ago
Turkey, "Türkiye" is just another useless show from the "president".
OkayPhysicist 4y ago
It's going to matter who you ask, but as a foreigner you're more likely to be talking to someone (relatively well-off, educated enough to have fluent English, probably not a fan of Erdoğan) who'd have preferred it to stay Turkey. It's just another step in the trend of undoing Atatürk's reforms that has defined the current regime. To summarize a lot of history, the foundation of modern Turkey was a pretty massive upheaval. Atatürk (the first president of Turkey, and is viewed pretty similarly to the US's founding fathers) worked pretty damn hard to drag the country away from its Ottoman roots and towards being a Western, secular, country. Under the Ottomans, the head of church and head of state were the same person, under Atatürk, church and state were separated. Atatürk's government outright banned the wear of most religious garb in public, such as fez's and headscarves. Women were given full rights. The entire alphabet was changed from an Arabic script to a Latin one. And these are just the big ones I can pull off the top of my head. Basically, imagine if George Washington had banned crucifixes from being displayed in public and switched the US's alphabet to Cyrillic. It is impossible to overstate how radical these reforms were, and most were intended to bring Turkey closer to Europe both economically and culturally. The following 85 years of Turkey's history, up to the modern day, has been marked by tensions between those that generally like the reforms, and would like to see Turkey continue towards being a well-respected member of the West, and the conservative faction who want Turkey to backslide into an Islamic theocracy. The name change is one of many postures Erdoğan has taken to distance himself from the former group, and amounts to a dog-whistle for the second. TL;DR: It's whole fucking can of worms.

Off-topic: Do most people there prefer "Türkiye" or "Turkey?"

by blagie 4y ago

Off-topic: Do most people there prefer "Türkiye" or "Turkey?"

There was an official name change [1] to Türkiye. 1. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/2/un-registers-turkiye-as-new-country-name-for-turkey https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/2/un-registers-turkiye...

blagie 4y ago
I'm very well aware of that. Whenever I've been on the receiving end of a name change like that, I (and everyone I knew) found it obnoxious. However, cultures differ. Turkey has a long history with name changes, and has been rather aggressive about them. When it became "Turkey," the post office wouldn't deliver mail unless the new name was used. Likewise, the capital has gone through two names since "Byzantium." I was genuinely curious about local reaction. I have no idea, from the other end of the world, whether this was imposed by Erdogan as a crazy policy to everyone's annoyance, or whether it is wildly popular. I assume somewhere in between.
- dkural 4y ago
  [flagged]
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  They got fed up with Google search returning stuff about birds.
  - aendruk 4y ago
    Who is “they”?
ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
[flagged]
msm_ 4y ago
> Erdogan released a memorandum and asked the public to use Türkiye to describe the country in every language I wonder how that works. Does Eredrogan expect every country to write and say "Türkiye? Does it work the other way around - can Germany change their official name in Turkey/Türkiye to "Deutschland"?
- boomboomsubban 4y ago
  >Does it work the other way around - can Germany change their official name in Turkey/Türkiye to "Deutschland"? Probably not in the same way, as Turkish is not a UN official language. They could request their name be changed in English, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, or Arabic though.
numpad0 4y ago
The problem is, the bird is supposedly named after the country, and that if the country had changed/clarified its name, so should the bird, against Turkish intent.

nextaccountic 4y ago

In some years, this will become a non-issue

blagie 4y ago
It will become a non-issue once all keyboards have a "ü" button. :) Which might not actually be that long.
- Cyph0n 4y ago
  Why is everyone focused on the umlaut? If you don’t have the button, use a “u” and move on.
  - sk0g 4y ago
    The umlauted u is not just a u with some visual flair. "ue" instead would be a more accurate transliteration, but Tuerkiye looks... awkward.
    - Cyph0n 4y ago
      Got it, but I’m saying that using “Turkiye” is better than using “Turkey”.
  - blagie 4y ago
    Things like text search and exact string matching. As minor as it might sound, if 199/200 countries work in your system, capitalism dictates that below a certain business size, the logical thing is often to just ignore the one country and move on. These things have odd cascading effects.
    - msm_ 4y ago
      I have good news for you - text search for non-ascii version of latin characters like ü is a long solved problem. That's because even in non-english speaking countries some people don't bother with diacritics, or they don't have a correct layout at that point, or the text is in source code and has to be ASCII, etc. You can try that now - my browser highlights Türkiye when I search for Turkiye.

tradertef 4y ago

As a Turk, I do not trust people who are using Turkiye in English. That is virtue signaling which is saying they are populist, nationalist etc. etc. I also find the change idiotic at the least though I understand why they did it.

macintux 4y ago
When working with people of different nationalities and ethnicities I emphasize trying to pronounce their names correctly. Why is this different?
- jordigh 4y ago
  Because it's a nationalistic thing to insist that all languages spell your country's name in the script and spelling of the source language. It's a stupid move by the Erdogan government to get people to stop thinking about türkiye birds when they think of the Turkey country. Other countries get by just fine. Germany, Alemania, Deutschland. Mexico, Messico, Méjico. Japan, Nippon, 日本. China, Zhōngguó, 中国. Every country gets by getting called different things in different languages. But Turkey insisting on the spelling just because they don't want to be associated to türkiye birds, where the birds are literally named after the country, is a silly move designed to stir nationalistic pride for their near totalitarian government.
  - pcardoso 4y ago
    One funny thing is that in Portuguese the word for turkey (the bird) is Perú… also the same word as the South American country. Turkey is Turquia though…
    - thaumasiotes 4y ago
      > Turkey is Turquia though… The bird is named after a series of misconceptions, with different results in different places. The country is named after the Turks; you expect it to be the same everywhere.
- 4y ago

jordigh 4y ago

Erdogan wants English to use the Turkish spelling because he's tired of English speakers thinking of the bird when they're talking about the country. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MyNaymeIs https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MyNaymeIs The funny thing is that through a bunch of funny historical accidents, the bird is literally named after the country, so we could just spell the birds türkiyes too.

foronetimeonly1 4y ago
Why do people need an alternative spelling to a country whose name is spelled in a latin alphabet? Should we spell England, wing-lunge for fun?
GauntletWizard 4y ago
In honor of Erdogan, I'm going to start calling it Turkiye. The bird, not the country.
sillytr 4y ago
Why not be more explicit? Turks call India "Hindi-stan". Which in Turkish is "Turkey-the-bird-stan". Including the Persian etymology would literally make it "Land of the Turkeys." If Modi wanted to pick a fight with Turkey it would have made for an entertaining UN session.

mrtksn 4y ago

I don't like using Turkiye in English, it sounds out of place to me. I'm native Turkish speaker.

ikeserbestian 4y ago

Turkey, "Türkiye" is just another useless show from the "president".

OkayPhysicist 4y ago

It's going to matter who you ask, but as a foreigner you're more likely to be talking to someone (relatively well-off, educated enough to have fluent English, probably not a fan of Erdoğan) who'd have preferred it to stay Turkey. It's just another step in the trend of undoing Atatürk's reforms that has defined the current regime. To summarize a lot of history, the foundation of modern Turkey was a pretty massive upheaval. Atatürk (the first president of Turkey, and is viewed pretty similarly to the US's founding fathers) worked pretty damn hard to drag the country away from its Ottoman roots and towards being a Western, secular, country. Under the Ottomans, the head of church and head of state were the same person, under Atatürk, church and state were separated. Atatürk's government outright banned the wear of most religious garb in public, such as fez's and headscarves. Women were given full rights. The entire alphabet was changed from an Arabic script to a Latin one. And these are just the big ones I can pull off the top of my head. Basically, imagine if George Washington had banned crucifixes from being displayed in public and switched the US's alphabet to Cyrillic. It is impossible to overstate how radical these reforms were, and most were intended to bring Turkey closer to Europe both economically and culturally. The following 85 years of Turkey's history, up to the modern day, has been marked by tensions between those that generally like the reforms, and would like to see Turkey continue towards being a well-respected member of the West, and the conservative faction who want Turkey to backslide into an Islamic theocracy. The name change is one of many postures Erdoğan has taken to distance himself from the former group, and amounts to a dog-whistle for the second. TL;DR: It's whole fucking can of worms.