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Off-Topic: Why Türkiye? Why not keep using Turkey in English? I know they changed their name to Türkiye, but why would we change it in our languages? We still
by miroljub 1y ago
Off-Topic: Why Türkiye? Why not keep using Turkey in English?
I know they changed their name to Türkiye, but why would we change it in our languages? We still use Germany instead of Deutschland, India instead of Bharat, and Italy instead of Italia.
So why make an exception for Turkey?
- m00dy 1y agoBecause we are born to be exceptional.
- jones89176 1y ago"Following an official letter submitted to the United Nations by the Republic of Türkiye, the country's name has been officially changed to Türkiye at the UN. UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said that a letter had been received on June 1 from the Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Cavuşoğlu addressed to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, requesting the use of “Türkiye” instead of “Turkey” for all affairs." [1] "Foreign Minister Cavuşoğlu said in a tweet that the move would "increase our country's brand value". The country’s English language public broadcaster TRT World said, the move would help to disassociate the country’s image from the large bird of the same name."[2] [1] https://turkiye.un.org/en/184798-turkeys-name-changed-t%C3%BCrkiye https://turkiye.un.org/en/184798-turkeys-name-changed-t%C3%B... [2] https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/turkey-or-turkiye-why-the-country-changed-its-official-name/y5ar25eim https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/turkey-or-turkiye-why-th...
- School-Cotton 1y agoSo what? The UN does not have the power to redefine what words mean in the English language, and neither does the Republic of Turkey. If Germany submitted an official letter somewhere purporting to change its English name to Deutschland, you should also not listen to them.
- happytoexplain 1y agoWhy the hostility? It's not like they changed the name of the Black Sea to the Sea of Turkey. It's not a "fuck you" move. Just keep spelling it the old way if you care for some reason.
- School-Cotton 1y ago> Why the hostility? Because the attempted name change is being done purely to stroke the ego of a right-wing authoritarian nationalist strongman. Attempts by such people to remake language according to their whims should be resisted whenever possible. > It's not like they changed the name of the Black Sea to the Sea of Turkey. I'm sure Erdogan would do just that if there were any realistic possibility that anybody would actually follow it. The "Türkiye" name change is as much as he thinks he can get away with.
- miroljub 1y agoExactly my point. And it doesn't apply only to English. There are 200+ languages and 8+ billion people in the world, and none of them is obliged to change the way they talk because someone doesn't like what a specific word means in one of those languages.
- throw4r3w21a3 1y agoYou are free to use their old name, and others are free to use their new name. You could even make up a name if you want.
- beardyw 1y ago> help to disassociate the country’s image from the large bird of the same name. So easily done - what? You are going to roast a whole country? You are going on holiday in huge bird?
- theturtle 1y ago[dead]
- m101 1y agoIt's because Erdogan is in charge and he's throwing his weight around because he knows he holds the cards on a number of geopolitical issues.
- csomar 1y agoI think they changed it in the UN or something. Theoretically their name never changed as most of their neighbors always called them Turkia.
- miroljub 1y agoCan you remind me which language is the official language of the country called UN? I'd like to pass a C1 UN-language test so I can apply for UN-citizenship.
- argestes 1y agoYeah, I'm from Turkey and it's really annoying for me to use a keyboard shortcuts to select "Türkiye" from dropdowns using year old "T", "U", "R" keys. Now in some websites it's "Turkey" and in some websites it's "Türkiye" I need to switch keyboard layouts just to select my country name. Even though, website doesn't let me use my actual name since my name has non ascii characters so I need to try many times.
- danhau 1y agoThis reminds me of my own struggles in locating my country in various dropdowns. Sometimes it‘s the trivial to find Austria, but sometimes Österreich under O and other times Österreich under Ö (sorted to the very bottom). Collation is fun!
- sigio 1y agoI feel your pain, looking at 'The Netherlands', 'Netherlands/Nederland', Holland, and even once 'Kingdom of The Netherlands'
- yongjik 1y agoGreetings from Korea, aka South Korea, aka Republic of Korea.
- School-Cotton 1y agoI’ve noticed that South Koreans often use the term “Korea” to refer to their country, and I’ve always been curious: are they referring to all of Korea, or only the south? For example, which of these statements would you be more likely to use colloquially? (a) Korea’s population is about 80 million, or (b) Korea’s population is about 50 million.
- yongjik 1y agoThe term could refer to either South Korea or Korea as a whole, depending on the context. As for your example, I think people would agree with (b) because when you're talking about populations people implicitly assume we're talking about a country. On the other hand, people say "Korea's history reaches back thousands of years," and obviously here "Korea" means Korea as a whole (the country of South Korea wasn't founded until 1948!). It gets extra confusing for Koreans because North Koreans use a different Korean word for "Korea" (either North Korea or Korea as a whole) - they are from two different historical names. So we can't even agree on how to call ourselves. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- 0xEF 1y agoRespect? If the people of that nation want their nation called something specific, cool. If they want to adopt/use the Anglicized version of their country's name, also cool. It's up to the people in that country, I guess. Plus, you know, gobble gobble.
- School-Cotton 1y ago> It's up to the people in that country, I guess No, it is not. How English is spoken is determined collectively by the community of English-speakers, not by the Turkish government. There is also the pretty major issue that native English speakers cannot even pronounce "Türkiye", nor easily type it. That's why use an English word for it, not a Turkish word -- because we speak English, not Turkish.
- 0xEF 1y ago> There is also the pretty major issue that native English speakers cannot even pronounce "Türkiye", nor easily type it. Skill issue. I don't speak Turkish either, but it takes all of two minutes to look up and learn the pronunciation and how to type an umlaut over a U with a simple alt code. I mean, come on. The Turkish government isn't asking everyone to convert to Islam and get to a conversational level with the language, just say their country's name how they think it should be said. If a nation can't even ask of the world to do such a simple thing without native English speakers getting bent out of shape over it, then it might be time for some serious self-reflection. But hey, downvote away if it makes you feel any better.
- School-Cotton 1y ago> I don't speak Turkish either, but it takes all of two minutes to look up and learn the pronunciation I really doubt that you are pronouncing it correctly. The word Türkiye contains multiple sounds that don't exist in English. If you don't actually speak Turkish, you are surely just using some Anglicized approximate pronunciation, and in that case, why not just use the actual English word?
- jstummbillig 1y agoDo we? https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=T%C3%BCrkiye,Turkey&hl=en https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=T%C3%BCrki... (US) https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=T%C3%BCrkiye,Turkey&hl=en https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=T%C3%BCrkiye,Turk... (global) Some noise in the global trend recently (any guesses?) but does not seem like a huge adjustment.
- helsinkiandrew 1y agoBecause they want to be known as Türkiye and have been actively requesting. The United Nations officially agreed to recognize the country's new name in 2022.
- School-Cotton 1y agoThe UN does not have the power to determine how the English language is spoken and written.
- SpicyLemonZest 1y agoThey don't, and nobody's patrolling the Internet to smack people who say Turkey. But in many areas of the world, names of places can be intensely politicized, so organizations like the article source ("the energy dedicated portal that aims to deliver up-to-date news and analysis across the energy agenda in 20+ countries in Central and Southeastern Europe") prefer as a matter of style to conform to official pronouncements. If they'd been around in 2019, they would have talked a lot about "FYROM" or "the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia": an incredibly unwieldly name, one that has probably never been used colloquially, but was necessary in order to avoid taking sides between Greece and the country now known as North Macedonia.
- throw4r3w21a3 1y agoNo entity has that power, but that was not the question. The question was not who enforces country names, but instead, why major news publications are using the name Türkiye.
- TyrianPurple 1y agoYou don't want to make the Sultan mad. If he gets mad, he won't sell you rare earths. All jokes aside, I'm pretty sure both are still used. Non Turks still use Turkey.
- blueflow 1y agoThe Germany/Deutschland/Alemannia/Niemcy situation is utter garbage and its existence is a curse upon this world, not justification to do it to other countries, too. Türkiye is Türkiye because it self-identifies as such.
- xg15 1y agoI think just for kicks some group should start lobbying for the US to be called "Columbia" again.
- rayiner 1y agoWe're laying the groundwork to globally search/replace "India" to "Bharat."
- Hemospectrum 1y agoLooking forward to my next long flight where I can watch movies about Bharatna Jones.
- ozgung 1y agoAs a Turkish person I used to agree with you. Not anymore. My people don't want to be associated with an ugly bird and I respect that. Also we don't want an exception. We're ready to use Bharat, Deutschland or any other name in our language if those nations want that. Same for the city names. It's about respecting those countries and their people. Fun fact: India is Hindistan in Turkish which literally means Land of Turkeys. Maybe we should really change. Bharat means spice which is a better name.
- OutOfHere 1y agoTurkiye is okay but Türkiye is not (in English).
- rafram 1y agoIndia's main official name is India. Bharat (from Sanskrit) is coequal according to the constitution, and Hindustan (from Persian) is also sometimes used.
- School-Cotton 1y agoThat's mostly because English is one of the two official languages of India, and even the local native languages (at least as spoken by the English-educated middle class) are heavily influenced by English. Similar to how the Philippines are just called the Philippines (or Pilipinas, the closest approximation that is pronounceable in Tagalog), rather than a native-language name.
- redwood 1y agoIt's a great bird.. in fact Benjamin Franklin proposed that it be the American bird. The bald eagle was chosen for whatever reason over that
- School-Cotton 1y agoFunny… turkeys (the bird) are called “dinde” in French, which means “from India” and is short for “poule d’Inde”: chicken from India. Guinea pigs are called “cochon d’Inde” which means “pig from India”. In fact they are neither from India nor Guinea.
- xg15 1y agoNot sure if it's a trend already that some countries are trying to exert more control over their own names, but I noticed the same with Belarus a few years ago. It used to be called "White Russia" in german, but at some point, the name vanished from both press articles and official publications and was replaced with Belarus. According to Wikipedia, there was a german government decision to change the official usage of the name, co-initiated by the Belarusian government. (This was before the war, so I assume the relations weren't yet as icy as they are today) https://dgo-online.org/informieren/aktuelles/belarusisch-deutsche-geschichtskommission-gegruendet/ https://dgo-online.org/informieren/aktuelles/belarusisch-deu... https://web.archive.org/web/20210924060241/https://geschichte-historyja.org/site/assets/files/1046/200715_pressemitteilung_geschichtskommission_by_de.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20210924060241/https://geschicht... (in German)
- miroljub 1y agoWhich is kind of funny, since Belarus means exactly Whiterussia.
- Bolwin 1y agoThe diacritics are a bit annoying to type but if they've asked to be called Turkiye why not call them Turkiye?
- miroljub 1y agoWhat kind of authority do they have over my language?
- happytoexplain 1y agoI don't understand why so many people are so quick to interpret things as some kind of boot on their neck. The official names of places change - they're proper nouns. Nobody is invoking authority to control how you write the names of places.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Tadpole9181 1y agoTo be fair, Erdogen is a literal boots-on-neck dictator and this entire spectacle is just another distraction / demonstration of political capita he is using to cling to power. Nor does it even make sense. All languages have names for countries, that are not the true names of those countries. Its normal. Especially when Turkey's desired diacritics can't even be typed on our keyboards. Is it reasonable for Israel to say we must type the name with Hebrew characters? And suddenly we have to guess WTF news agencies are talking about. The point of languages is to be understood, this is making it harder to understand to appease some authoritarian loser. If Turkey were offensive, that's one thing. But it's not and there's no reason for it.
- throw4r3w21a3 1y agoThey have no authority over the English language. They do have the right to request a specific name when used in an organization in which they are a part. You are free to use whatever name you want, while those in the UN, and organizations that cover the UN, will use the name Türkiye.
- Yizahi 1y agoFunnily, the actual pronunciation is easier now, and it (to me) sounds 99% close to Turkia. I don't get why they went with such complicated letter sequence for such a straightforward word. Though both languages are not native to me, so I may be wrong. But I was baffled this year, after discovering that incomprehensible Türkiye is actually Turkia. PS: I'm going from this this video as a basis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYjVIaZA14c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYjVIaZA14c
- School-Cotton 1y agoTürkiye in Turkish contains sounds that can’t be pronounced in English, and does not sound much like “Turkia”. The closest English approximate pronunciation (which is what you hear in that video) does sound pretty close to Turkia, though. > I don't get why they went with such complicated letter sequence for such a straightforward word. The spelling wasn’t invented recently, it’s just the standard word for Turkey in the Turkish language.
- drivingmenuts 1y agoNot an American news agency - they're probably following a European standard.