The umlaut is a pain in the ass to type
January 27, 2023 8:42 AM Subscribe
The move by Mr. Erdogan’s government is unusual. It involves the difference between what linguists call the “exonym"—the name for a place or thing in other languages, and the “endonym"—the local name.
His government isn’t changing Turkey’s name but demanding countries use the Turkish spelling and pronunciation rather than render the name in their own languages.
The French should no longer say “La Turquie," Turkish officials say. The Spanish should ditch “Turquía"—and English speakers should drop “Turkey."
His government isn’t changing Turkey’s name but demanding countries use the Turkish spelling and pronunciation rather than render the name in their own languages.
The French should no longer say “La Turquie," Turkish officials say. The Spanish should ditch “Turquía"—and English speakers should drop “Turkey."
My job has huuuuuuuuuge problems with people wanting to use special characters--using special characters breaks our computer systems horribly every few years and tech-ops refuses to accommodate. I can't help but wonder how much computer system issues are going to come up from this.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:51 AM on January 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:51 AM on January 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
I don't know, that's their name. Of course everyone should pronounce it the way they pronounce it?
posted by prefpara at 8:56 AM on January 27, 2023 [18 favorites]
posted by prefpara at 8:56 AM on January 27, 2023 [18 favorites]
This kind of thing always reminds me of this SNL skit (RIP, Phil Hartman). There's a defensible principle under there, but it can be pushed beyond reason.
posted by praemunire at 9:02 AM on January 27, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 9:02 AM on January 27, 2023 [8 favorites]
In case you're wondering, "ราชอาณาจักรไทย" means "Thailand".
posted by WalkingAround at 9:04 AM on January 27, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by WalkingAround at 9:04 AM on January 27, 2023 [7 favorites]
I've noticed this recently and was wondering about the reason behind the change, so thanks for this.
Now if we could just get to the bottom of the recent trend using "commend" in place of "recommend".
posted by some loser at 9:08 AM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
Now if we could just get to the bottom of the recent trend using "commend" in place of "recommend".
posted by some loser at 9:08 AM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
Some of us are old enough to remember when Mumbai was Bombay, or Beijing was Peking. This should be accepted uncontroversially.
posted by rikschell at 9:13 AM on January 27, 2023 [29 favorites]
posted by rikschell at 9:13 AM on January 27, 2023 [29 favorites]
Oh, that's how it's pronounced / spelled. Cool, I'll remember it and use it. Like finally getting someone's pronouns, or the name they really want to be called, it's just a matter of respect to abide by their wishes. Next time I see Ulke at the front desk of our building, I'll politely ask her to say the name of her home country so I can get it just right.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:14 AM on January 27, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:14 AM on January 27, 2023 [11 favorites]
Get a legitimate government and then these things and all else can be considered
posted by GoblinHoney at 9:15 AM on January 27, 2023 [24 favorites]
posted by GoblinHoney at 9:15 AM on January 27, 2023 [24 favorites]
The IATA standard is going to collapse this to TURKIYE, and they’ll get no traction whatsoever trying to change that — airlines will never accept the equipment change costs.
But. I don’t think asking people to use Ü instead of U is a big deal: it’s been supported since before Unicode, and they’re welcome to it if they want it.
They’re not asking for a lot, and however much I may dislike their leader and his politics, I don’t feel comfortable denying them this on the basis of Ü difficulty.
posted by Callisto Prime at 9:16 AM on January 27, 2023 [9 favorites]
But. I don’t think asking people to use Ü instead of U is a big deal: it’s been supported since before Unicode, and they’re welcome to it if they want it.
They’re not asking for a lot, and however much I may dislike their leader and his politics, I don’t feel comfortable denying them this on the basis of Ü difficulty.
posted by Callisto Prime at 9:16 AM on January 27, 2023 [9 favorites]
I guess the real question is how many Turkish people who aren’t Erdogan want this change?
posted by Jon_Evil at 9:17 AM on January 27, 2023 [17 favorites]
posted by Jon_Evil at 9:17 AM on January 27, 2023 [17 favorites]
What this article doesn't mention about the "unflattering" comparisons to the bird called a Turkey is that the bird was actually named after the country as it was imported to Europe through the Ottoman empire.
posted by mosst at 9:18 AM on January 27, 2023 [14 favorites]
posted by mosst at 9:18 AM on January 27, 2023 [14 favorites]
No.
I don't say "Zhongguo," and I don't say "Deutschland" when I'm speaking English. But being a reasonable person, I will use "Türkiye" when Erdogan acknowledges "genocide."
posted by the sobsister at 9:20 AM on January 27, 2023 [54 favorites]
I don't say "Zhongguo," and I don't say "Deutschland" when I'm speaking English. But being a reasonable person, I will use "Türkiye" when Erdogan acknowledges "genocide."
posted by the sobsister at 9:20 AM on January 27, 2023 [54 favorites]
Wait, nevermind, I missed the lower part of the article (I blame the numerous banner ads) - they did mention that after all.
posted by mosst at 9:20 AM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by mosst at 9:20 AM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
What's next? We start calling Finland Suomi? Ireland Éire?
.....yeah, I guess that's fine, actually.
posted by lumpenprole at 9:21 AM on January 27, 2023 [17 favorites]
.....yeah, I guess that's fine, actually.
posted by lumpenprole at 9:21 AM on January 27, 2023 [17 favorites]
We all switched from Kiev to Kyiv and so on when the Ukraine War began, so I don't see why we can't do the same for this.
posted by briank at 9:21 AM on January 27, 2023 [14 favorites]
posted by briank at 9:21 AM on January 27, 2023 [14 favorites]
The tone of this article, presenting this like it's so goofy and bizarre that a country would want to have their name represented correctly along with the weird lead in about turkey-the-bird (and missing the real context around it, as noted above) reads as mildly cruel. Ok, sure, characters outside your systems typefaces is a hard problem and reading the language to represent Ethiopia is inscrutable (since I don't know the language as written) but it's never sat well with me that we (internationally!) don't even try to gloss the correct pronunciation using the character set we have in our languages.
Like, I don't even know the correct way to pronounce Ethiopia, or Thailand! That's...embarrassing.
posted by Grim Fridge at 9:23 AM on January 27, 2023 [10 favorites]
Like, I don't even know the correct way to pronounce Ethiopia, or Thailand! That's...embarrassing.
posted by Grim Fridge at 9:23 AM on January 27, 2023 [10 favorites]
Hey, you know, a person can be an incorrigible shitbeard, and still be right sometimes.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:24 AM on January 27, 2023 [14 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:24 AM on January 27, 2023 [14 favorites]
I don't say "Zhongguo," and I don't say "Deutschland" when I'm speaking English.
When people get married and change their names, do you dig your heels in about that too?
posted by mhoye at 9:25 AM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
When people get married and change their names, do you dig your heels in about that too?
posted by mhoye at 9:25 AM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
prefpara, this is kind of the point here - the difference between what they call it (the endonym) and what we call it (the exonym).
Sometimes the exonym is just a poorly pronounced or mangled version of the endonym. So 北京 is "Beijing" in English, Afrikaans ,and Romanian, "Pekin" in Polish, "Пекин" in Russian, etc. Interesting that the Slavic world seemed to have not got the memo when Wade-Giles was replacedwith pinyin, but hey wevs it is their language right?
In other cases the exonym is something completely different from the endonym. So although locals call it Suomi English speakers call it Finland. To its neighbours Deutschland is all over the map - Allemagne, Németország, Germania, Niemcy, or Tyskland, among many others. Aside from the Dutch "Duitsland" these foreign names seem to have nothing whatsoever in common with the endonym.
posted by Meatbomb at 9:25 AM on January 27, 2023 [14 favorites]
Sometimes the exonym is just a poorly pronounced or mangled version of the endonym. So 北京 is "Beijing" in English, Afrikaans ,and Romanian, "Pekin" in Polish, "Пекин" in Russian, etc. Interesting that the Slavic world seemed to have not got the memo when Wade-Giles was replacedwith pinyin, but hey wevs it is their language right?
In other cases the exonym is something completely different from the endonym. So although locals call it Suomi English speakers call it Finland. To its neighbours Deutschland is all over the map - Allemagne, Németország, Germania, Niemcy, or Tyskland, among many others. Aside from the Dutch "Duitsland" these foreign names seem to have nothing whatsoever in common with the endonym.
posted by Meatbomb at 9:25 AM on January 27, 2023 [14 favorites]
When people get married and change their names, do you dig your heels in about that too?
Wow. I'll give you a minute to think about how utterly dissimilar the two situations are.
posted by the sobsister at 9:27 AM on January 27, 2023 [26 favorites]
Wow. I'll give you a minute to think about how utterly dissimilar the two situations are.
posted by the sobsister at 9:27 AM on January 27, 2023 [26 favorites]
I look forward to Iraqis asking the world to pronounce 3iraq properly.
(For those not in the know: semitic languages have a consonant called the glottal pause, which English speakers have trouble hearing, let alone pronouncing. Pre-Unicode, Arabs used the numeral 3 to type it for Latinized Arabic.)
posted by ocschwar at 9:28 AM on January 27, 2023 [8 favorites]
(For those not in the know: semitic languages have a consonant called the glottal pause, which English speakers have trouble hearing, let alone pronouncing. Pre-Unicode, Arabs used the numeral 3 to type it for Latinized Arabic.)
posted by ocschwar at 9:28 AM on January 27, 2023 [8 favorites]
Just imagining the response if—when Trump was president—he'd demanded that Mexico stop referring to the US as los estados unidos. Still totes cool?
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:30 AM on January 27, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:30 AM on January 27, 2023 [11 favorites]
Aside from the Dutch "Duitsland" these foreign names seem to have nothing whatsoever in common with the endonym.
Minor correction, but Tyskland and Deutschland are pretty similar when spoken in their respective languages, and clearly related somehow, even if there is some scholarly disagreement over exactly how.
posted by Dysk at 9:32 AM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
Minor correction, but Tyskland and Deutschland are pretty similar when spoken in their respective languages, and clearly related somehow, even if there is some scholarly disagreement over exactly how.
posted by Dysk at 9:32 AM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
using special characters breaks our computer systems horribly
This is a common tech problem for older systems but even the language we use in the US to talk about it is problematic. There's nothing "special" about the ü in Türkiye except that it's not an ASCII character and thus difficult for some computer systems that need updating. ü is a necessary letter for writing the Turkish language, it's not "special" at all. American English is the one that is special with its very minimal character set. Which can't even spell American words or placenames, incidentally. Española, New Mexico causes all sorts of IT headaches. Not to mention Hawaiʻi.
On a totally different angle.. it's hard to see anything Erdogan is doing now other than through the lens of his authoritarian control over Turkey. For some briefing on that, Turkey could be on the brink of dictatorship and The world looks on as Erdogan jockeys for a third decade of power in Turkey. I don't know enough about Turkish culture or politics to understand what signal is implied in the word "Türkiye". But I do know there's much more important topics facing the country right now than how outsiders spell the name of the place.
posted by Nelson at 9:32 AM on January 27, 2023 [16 favorites]
This is a common tech problem for older systems but even the language we use in the US to talk about it is problematic. There's nothing "special" about the ü in Türkiye except that it's not an ASCII character and thus difficult for some computer systems that need updating. ü is a necessary letter for writing the Turkish language, it's not "special" at all. American English is the one that is special with its very minimal character set. Which can't even spell American words or placenames, incidentally. Española, New Mexico causes all sorts of IT headaches. Not to mention Hawaiʻi.
On a totally different angle.. it's hard to see anything Erdogan is doing now other than through the lens of his authoritarian control over Turkey. For some briefing on that, Turkey could be on the brink of dictatorship and The world looks on as Erdogan jockeys for a third decade of power in Turkey. I don't know enough about Turkish culture or politics to understand what signal is implied in the word "Türkiye". But I do know there's much more important topics facing the country right now than how outsiders spell the name of the place.
posted by Nelson at 9:32 AM on January 27, 2023 [16 favorites]
There's nothing "special" about the ü in Türkiye except that it's not an ASCII character
... and not a part of the English alphabet.
posted by Meatbomb at 9:35 AM on January 27, 2023 [10 favorites]
... and not a part of the English alphabet.
posted by Meatbomb at 9:35 AM on January 27, 2023 [10 favorites]
I mean, when I learned other languages I had to learn their words for the countries of the world, including their different names for the USA. At no point did I ever think, wow how dare you have a different name for our country, please say ‘MURRIKA. I’m down with corrections to the English versions of country names to better approach the endonym’s pronunciation, but when it means new characters or character sets, all that will do is make English speakers (in this case) more likely to mispronounce it, since people may not know how to say an umlaut or Irish fada or whatever. A bastardized phonetic spelling seems better.
posted by caviar2d2 at 9:36 AM on January 27, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by caviar2d2 at 9:36 AM on January 27, 2023 [10 favorites]
What's next? We start calling . . . Ireland Éire?
Please don't, unless the rest of your sentence is in Irish. From the constitution:
ARTICLE 4
The name of the State is Éire, or, in the English language, Ireland.
Ironically, the preamble of the same constitution has "We, the people of Éire, humbly acknowledging all our obligations to our Divine Lord, Jesus Christ, . . ." which kinda negs my request.
posted by BobTheScientist at 9:36 AM on January 27, 2023 [16 favorites]
Please don't, unless the rest of your sentence is in Irish. From the constitution:
ARTICLE 4
The name of the State is Éire, or, in the English language, Ireland.
Ironically, the preamble of the same constitution has "We, the people of Éire, humbly acknowledging all our obligations to our Divine Lord, Jesus Christ, . . ." which kinda negs my request.
posted by BobTheScientist at 9:36 AM on January 27, 2023 [16 favorites]
Example (Burma vs. Myanmar) of how this can be not at all a straightforward question, even when it comes to endonyms.
posted by praemunire at 9:37 AM on January 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 9:37 AM on January 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
Chicken Kiev, on the other hand, will never be called Chicken Kyiv for obvious reasons.
posted by y2karl at 9:37 AM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by y2karl at 9:37 AM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
I think there's a distinction to be made between trying to control what all languages call a country and specifically changing the English name. The price of being The Global Language is that your language no longer belongs solely to English-speaking countries, which means that the exonym/endonym distinction doesn't hold in the same way that it does for other languages. (Of course Erdogan is trying to control both here, which makes the conversation even harder.)
posted by Not A Thing at 9:38 AM on January 27, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by Not A Thing at 9:38 AM on January 27, 2023 [7 favorites]
Meatbomb: So although locals call it Suomi English speakers call it Finland.
In that case, locals, namely Swedish-speaking Finns, call Finland Finland.
This is, of course, also an issue with Turkey, whose Kurdish speakers call the country Tirkiye.
posted by Kattullus at 9:41 AM on January 27, 2023 [10 favorites]
In that case, locals, namely Swedish-speaking Finns, call Finland Finland.
This is, of course, also an issue with Turkey, whose Kurdish speakers call the country Tirkiye.
posted by Kattullus at 9:41 AM on January 27, 2023 [10 favorites]
The umlaut is a pain in the ass to type
Just wait -- next the Turks will be demanding you dot that capital "I" in İstanbul, as they do. (In Turkish (and Azerbaijani) both capital and lower-case "ı"s can be dotted, or not.) As for the umlaut, in German you can always substitute ue fo ü, oe for ö and ae for ä (but probably not for the French ï and ë diaereses (as well as the New Yorker's ö) which signal a new syllable rather than a different vowel sound).
[Apologies if your browser doesn't interpret my Turkish "i"s correctly]
posted by Rash at 9:44 AM on January 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
Just wait -- next the Turks will be demanding you dot that capital "I" in İstanbul, as they do. (In Turkish (and Azerbaijani) both capital and lower-case "ı"s can be dotted, or not.) As for the umlaut, in German you can always substitute ue fo ü, oe for ö and ae for ä (but probably not for the French ï and ë diaereses (as well as the New Yorker's ö) which signal a new syllable rather than a different vowel sound).
[Apologies if your browser doesn't interpret my Turkish "i"s correctly]
posted by Rash at 9:44 AM on January 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
Chicken Kiev, on the other hand, will never be called Chicken Kyiv for obvious reasons.
About that...
posted by robself at 9:47 AM on January 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
About that...
posted by robself at 9:47 AM on January 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
I think it's misguided to apply norms about using people's preferred names as individuals, when we're talking about naming places. We're talking about the fact that different languages have different words for the same places. And that's for good reason, because it's actually extremely difficult for people to use words that have phonemes and characters from outside the languages they actually speak and write.
Rather than looking at this request as asking people to use "the correct name", you can also look at it as asking speakers of a foreign language to change the words in their language. Which is indeed something you can ask - and sometimes they might choose to agree (Mumbai, Beijing, Kyiv...) - but to suggest it's something that they should always be willing to do for you is actually a pretty extreme position.
Is Erdogan's government going to ban domestic use of "Birleşik Krallık" and all other Turkish exonyms?
posted by automatronic at 10:00 AM on January 27, 2023 [32 favorites]
Rather than looking at this request as asking people to use "the correct name", you can also look at it as asking speakers of a foreign language to change the words in their language. Which is indeed something you can ask - and sometimes they might choose to agree (Mumbai, Beijing, Kyiv...) - but to suggest it's something that they should always be willing to do for you is actually a pretty extreme position.
Is Erdogan's government going to ban domestic use of "Birleşik Krallık" and all other Turkish exonyms?
posted by automatronic at 10:00 AM on January 27, 2023 [32 favorites]
Just imagining the response if—when Trump was president—he'd demanded that Mexico stop referring to the US as los estados unidos. Still totes cool?
This would actually be cool for Mexico, because then los Estados Unidos Mexicanos would get that synecdoche and they might like that.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:01 AM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
This would actually be cool for Mexico, because then los Estados Unidos Mexicanos would get that synecdoche and they might like that.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:01 AM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
The exonym vs endonym debate is a complicated one and I get there is no hard and fast rule - but I'd like to think that unless there is a strong reason not to, we respect the wishes of the inhabitants of the city or country to use a particular name. So my knee-jerk reaction here would be to respect the Turkish government's wishes. It is really no trouble for me to stop calling the place Turkey.
That being said, I am friends with a person of Burmese descent who prefers to call the country and people Burma and Burmese despite the colonial ties, the reason being the name Myanmar for her is too strongly associated with the current military regime which she is deeply opposed to. So - unless it was posted elsewhere, is there some indication that this request by the Turkish government is supported by the Turkish people generally, or is this a flex on the part of the Erdogan regime?
posted by fortitude25 at 10:03 AM on January 27, 2023 [17 favorites]
That being said, I am friends with a person of Burmese descent who prefers to call the country and people Burma and Burmese despite the colonial ties, the reason being the name Myanmar for her is too strongly associated with the current military regime which she is deeply opposed to. So - unless it was posted elsewhere, is there some indication that this request by the Turkish government is supported by the Turkish people generally, or is this a flex on the part of the Erdogan regime?
posted by fortitude25 at 10:03 AM on January 27, 2023 [17 favorites]
Fair enough to Türkiye. We invented UTF-8 for a reason and it's still in Latin script. Why not?
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 10:08 AM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 10:08 AM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
from the wikipedia article -
The etymology of Byzantium is unknown. It has been suggested that the name is of Thracian origin.[4] It may be derived from the Thracian personal name Byzas which means "he-goat".[5][6] Ancient Greek legend refers to the Greek king Byzas, the leader of the Megarian colonists and founder of the city.
it seems as though that part of the world has animal identification problems
posted by pyramid termite at 10:12 AM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
The etymology of Byzantium is unknown. It has been suggested that the name is of Thracian origin.[4] It may be derived from the Thracian personal name Byzas which means "he-goat".[5][6] Ancient Greek legend refers to the Greek king Byzas, the leader of the Megarian colonists and founder of the city.
it seems as though that part of the world has animal identification problems
posted by pyramid termite at 10:12 AM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
I don't know, that's their name. Of course everyone should pronounce it the way they pronounce it?
---
So - unless it was posted elsewhere, is there some indication that this request by the Turkish government is supported by the Turkish people generally, or is this a flex on the part of the Erdogan regime?
I'm currently in a country where a human rights lawyer just got assassinated/politically murdered* the day before my arrival and one of his biggest lawsuits is against the govt/king (same difference) for the unilateral move to change its name. Considering one thing that marks Erdogan's reign is a nostalgic return to its Ottoman Empire days, mark me down as extremely suspicious of the supposed populist desire of this move.
*"So who's the suspect?"
"The government."
posted by cendawanita at 10:13 AM on January 27, 2023 [15 favorites]
---
So - unless it was posted elsewhere, is there some indication that this request by the Turkish government is supported by the Turkish people generally, or is this a flex on the part of the Erdogan regime?
I'm currently in a country where a human rights lawyer just got assassinated/politically murdered* the day before my arrival and one of his biggest lawsuits is against the govt/king (same difference) for the unilateral move to change its name. Considering one thing that marks Erdogan's reign is a nostalgic return to its Ottoman Empire days, mark me down as extremely suspicious of the supposed populist desire of this move.
*"So who's the suspect?"
"The government."
posted by cendawanita at 10:13 AM on January 27, 2023 [15 favorites]
This is nobody's business but the Türk's.
posted by Flashman at 10:14 AM on January 27, 2023 [48 favorites]
posted by Flashman at 10:14 AM on January 27, 2023 [48 favorites]
To the ASCII and Unicode comments, a brief historical note:
Ü/Ü are in codepage 437 and iso-8859-1, which seem to have inherited their character locations from HP Roman (1982). So, it’s been widely supported in English-speaking computing for 40 years, in every successor to the original old incapable ASCII standard.
posted by Callisto Prime at 10:18 AM on January 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
Ü/Ü are in codepage 437 and iso-8859-1, which seem to have inherited their character locations from HP Roman (1982). So, it’s been widely supported in English-speaking computing for 40 years, in every successor to the original old incapable ASCII standard.
posted by Callisto Prime at 10:18 AM on January 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
Prior to 1935, the name for what is now the state of Iran was "Persia." The English-language name was changed due to the direct intervention of the Iranian government. Granted, one of the reasons for the change was that the new one had associations with Aryanism, but "Iran" had also been the endonym of choice for centuries—and now, as far as I'm aware, nobody's actually pushing for a return to older forms.
So the basic idea of saying "hey, our country would rather you call us this than that," isn't particularly objectionable. The chief issues with Erdoğan's proposal are twofold—
1. First, there's the imposition of an unfamiliar character (ü) onto a language that does not typically use it. Of course, from a purely typographical perspective, this isn't as much of a problem as it might seem. Umlauts and diaereses are unfamiliar, but not totally foreign to English-language writing, with the New Yorker 's insistence on the latter in words like "coöperation" as a classic example of use. Some writers also retain the umlaut in words of German origin, such as "doppelgänger"—though here, I believe the recommended practice is to drop the dots entirely. However, even though the character doesn't present an issue for comprehension, English readers won't associate it with any particular pronunciation, so I imagine that even if Türkiye were adopted as the English name it would hardly be pronounced as it is in Turkish.
2. The bigger issue is—is Türkiye really that different from Turkey to begin with? I think it's easier to swallow dramatic changes like Persia -> Iran (or a hypothetical Finland -> Suomi, sure), because one can make the case that in discarding the old name one is also discarding the historical and in many cases colonial baggage that accompanies it. But there's no clean break in a Turkey -> Türkiye switch, which means that the reasons for requesting the switch (other than, perhaps, to flex the state's muscles in the sphere of international culture) are more obscure. The Foreign Ministry's reluctance to comment on these reasons is, I think, a major issue in preventing popular acceptance of the change.
posted by the tartare yolk at 10:27 AM on January 27, 2023 [23 favorites]
So the basic idea of saying "hey, our country would rather you call us this than that," isn't particularly objectionable. The chief issues with Erdoğan's proposal are twofold—
1. First, there's the imposition of an unfamiliar character (ü) onto a language that does not typically use it. Of course, from a purely typographical perspective, this isn't as much of a problem as it might seem. Umlauts and diaereses are unfamiliar, but not totally foreign to English-language writing, with the New Yorker 's insistence on the latter in words like "coöperation" as a classic example of use. Some writers also retain the umlaut in words of German origin, such as "doppelgänger"—though here, I believe the recommended practice is to drop the dots entirely. However, even though the character doesn't present an issue for comprehension, English readers won't associate it with any particular pronunciation, so I imagine that even if Türkiye were adopted as the English name it would hardly be pronounced as it is in Turkish.
2. The bigger issue is—is Türkiye really that different from Turkey to begin with? I think it's easier to swallow dramatic changes like Persia -> Iran (or a hypothetical Finland -> Suomi, sure), because one can make the case that in discarding the old name one is also discarding the historical and in many cases colonial baggage that accompanies it. But there's no clean break in a Turkey -> Türkiye switch, which means that the reasons for requesting the switch (other than, perhaps, to flex the state's muscles in the sphere of international culture) are more obscure. The Foreign Ministry's reluctance to comment on these reasons is, I think, a major issue in preventing popular acceptance of the change.
posted by the tartare yolk at 10:27 AM on January 27, 2023 [23 favorites]
If you only speak English and haven't done much traveling you may be surprised to learn that *most* countries have different names from what's on your English map.
posted by aspersioncast at 10:33 AM on January 27, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by aspersioncast at 10:33 AM on January 27, 2023 [7 favorites]
I think the reason a country might ask to change its name matters. When it has to do with colonialism, for example, that's generally sympathetic. The stated reason in this case is just silly, given that the bird was named after the country. Why not ask us to change the name of the bird instead?
Additionally, the requested new spelling "Türkiye", practically speaking, is just going to cause confusion. Most English speakers will look at that and then say some variation of "Turkey", but made to sound a little weird. Would that really be preferable to the current situation?
Next thing you know, they'll tell us we can't have ottomans anymore!
posted by epimorph at 10:34 AM on January 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
Additionally, the requested new spelling "Türkiye", practically speaking, is just going to cause confusion. Most English speakers will look at that and then say some variation of "Turkey", but made to sound a little weird. Would that really be preferable to the current situation?
Next thing you know, they'll tell us we can't have ottomans anymore!
posted by epimorph at 10:34 AM on January 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
Re: the Iranian name change, it's also interesting to note that the British government decided to promote a version without diacritics ("Iran") instead of the proposed "Irân"-with-a-circumflex! Not to say that we should defer to 1930s precedent in terms of what degree of foreignness we permit in our language, but
The IATA standard is going to collapse this to TURKIYE, and they’ll get no traction whatsoever trying to change that — airlines will never accept the equipment change costs.
seems like a plausible compromise outside of the aviation industry, as well. (Though, according to the article, the US government is keeping the umlaut already, so who knows?)
posted by the tartare yolk at 10:35 AM on January 27, 2023
The IATA standard is going to collapse this to TURKIYE, and they’ll get no traction whatsoever trying to change that — airlines will never accept the equipment change costs.
seems like a plausible compromise outside of the aviation industry, as well. (Though, according to the article, the US government is keeping the umlaut already, so who knows?)
posted by the tartare yolk at 10:35 AM on January 27, 2023
If you only speak English and haven't done much traveling you may be surprised to learn that *most* countries have different names from what's on your English map.
And often those names are better, especially in Italy. (Napoli versus Naples, Firenze versus Florence, Turino versus Turin, etc).
posted by jmauro at 10:36 AM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
And often those names are better, especially in Italy. (Napoli versus Naples, Firenze versus Florence, Turino versus Turin, etc).
posted by jmauro at 10:36 AM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
Super grossed out at how many MeFites are balking at the suggestion that folks should have self-determination about how they are referred to. Y’all must be the same people who mispronounce my name over and over again for years despite my repeatedly correcting you.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 10:37 AM on January 27, 2023 [19 favorites]
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 10:37 AM on January 27, 2023 [19 favorites]
I've always thought that Turkey was a strange name for a country. Like since I was 5 years old. Then at some point I realized it was named after the Turks and was like, oh what a coincidence that its the same as that silly bird.
So sure, Türkiye. You do you. BUT do I really have to listen to Erdogan? Can't literally anyone else bring me this important cultural update?
posted by Glibpaxman at 10:42 AM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
So sure, Türkiye. You do you. BUT do I really have to listen to Erdogan? Can't literally anyone else bring me this important cultural update?
posted by Glibpaxman at 10:42 AM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
Super grossed out at how many MeFites are balking at the suggestion that folks should have self-determination about how they are referred to. Y’all must be the same people who mispronounce my name over and over again for years despite my repeatedly correcting you.
You are one person. I will respect your right to call yourself by your chosen name.
From a comment up above:
That being said, I am friends with a person of Burmese descent who prefers to call the country and people Burma and Burmese despite the colonial ties, the reason being the name Myanmar for her is too strongly associated with the current military regime which she is deeply opposed to.
Is Burma one person? If it means anything I've had met more than one person in the country who refuses to use Myanmar.
Eswatini: Activist Thulani Maseko shot dead at his home
Now, how about this person? FTA: The bald-faced human rights lawyer had filed a lawsuit against King Mswati III for renaming the country Eswatini by decree, saying it was against the constitution. In 2014, Maseko and the editor of The Nation monthly magazine, Bheki Makhubu, were jailed after criticizing the judiciary for its bias and lack of independence. They were charged and convicted of contempt of court.
The killing of Thulani Maseko came hours after the king said at a traditional ceremony: "People should not complain about mercenaries killing them. These people started the violence first, but when the state cracks down on them for their actions, they make a lot of noise blaming King Mswati.
For TFA in the FPP: Even many Turkish citizens, when speaking English, still say “Turkey."
“What use is it for us?" asked Murat Demir, a 49-year-old graphic designer in Istanbul. “We say ‘ABD,’ Americans say ‘USA.’ Germans say ‘Bundesrepublik Deutschland,’ we say ‘Almanya.’ Why try to impose Turkish name of our country on other nations?"
Now, how many people is that?
posted by cendawanita at 10:44 AM on January 27, 2023 [36 favorites]
You are one person. I will respect your right to call yourself by your chosen name.
From a comment up above:
That being said, I am friends with a person of Burmese descent who prefers to call the country and people Burma and Burmese despite the colonial ties, the reason being the name Myanmar for her is too strongly associated with the current military regime which she is deeply opposed to.
Is Burma one person? If it means anything I've had met more than one person in the country who refuses to use Myanmar.
Eswatini: Activist Thulani Maseko shot dead at his home
Now, how about this person? FTA: The bald-faced human rights lawyer had filed a lawsuit against King Mswati III for renaming the country Eswatini by decree, saying it was against the constitution. In 2014, Maseko and the editor of The Nation monthly magazine, Bheki Makhubu, were jailed after criticizing the judiciary for its bias and lack of independence. They were charged and convicted of contempt of court.
The killing of Thulani Maseko came hours after the king said at a traditional ceremony: "People should not complain about mercenaries killing them. These people started the violence first, but when the state cracks down on them for their actions, they make a lot of noise blaming King Mswati.
For TFA in the FPP: Even many Turkish citizens, when speaking English, still say “Turkey."
“What use is it for us?" asked Murat Demir, a 49-year-old graphic designer in Istanbul. “We say ‘ABD,’ Americans say ‘USA.’ Germans say ‘Bundesrepublik Deutschland,’ we say ‘Almanya.’ Why try to impose Turkish name of our country on other nations?"
Now, how many people is that?
posted by cendawanita at 10:44 AM on January 27, 2023 [36 favorites]
Like, sure, the article is being written and read from the perspective of, oh those arrogant Americans. But me, and people from countries like mine, are also not Turkish, don't use the same Turkish characters (we don't have the umlaut at all), so what are we? Arrogant as well? I stand ready for the Viets to remind the Anglosphere how their latin-spelled name OUGHT to be spelled.
posted by cendawanita at 10:48 AM on January 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by cendawanita at 10:48 AM on January 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
Ü/Ü are in codepage 437 and iso-8859-1, which seem to have inherited their character locations from HP Roman (1982). So, it’s been widely supported in English-speaking computing for 40 years, in every successor to the original old incapable ASCII standard.
Almost but not quite because CP437 and ISO-8859-1/Windows-1252 are not identical.
Ü is 0xDC in ISO-8859-1/Windows-1252 and 0x9A in CP437. ü is 0xFC in ISO-8859-1/Windows-1252 and 0x81 in CP437. Which one is an ASCII text document encoded in? 🤷
And what if you wanted to use it in the same place as where you might use actual Turkish? You can't use CP437 or ISO-8859-1 because it only supports a subset of the Turkish alphabet. You'd need to use CP857 or ISO-8859-9 or ISO 8859-3 which, again, have different encodings for characters, EVEN BETWEEN THE ISO CHARACTER SETS. Seriously. Ğ is 0xAB in ISO 8859-3, 0xD0 in ISO-8859-9, and 0xA6 in CP857.
That's why UTF-8 is a thing.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 10:49 AM on January 27, 2023 [10 favorites]
Almost but not quite because CP437 and ISO-8859-1/Windows-1252 are not identical.
Ü is 0xDC in ISO-8859-1/Windows-1252 and 0x9A in CP437. ü is 0xFC in ISO-8859-1/Windows-1252 and 0x81 in CP437. Which one is an ASCII text document encoded in? 🤷
And what if you wanted to use it in the same place as where you might use actual Turkish? You can't use CP437 or ISO-8859-1 because it only supports a subset of the Turkish alphabet. You'd need to use CP857 or ISO-8859-9 or ISO 8859-3 which, again, have different encodings for characters, EVEN BETWEEN THE ISO CHARACTER SETS. Seriously. Ğ is 0xAB in ISO 8859-3, 0xD0 in ISO-8859-9, and 0xA6 in CP857.
That's why UTF-8 is a thing.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 10:49 AM on January 27, 2023 [10 favorites]
it seems as though that part of the world has animal identification problems
Contrary to our modern understanding, the ancient Byzantines referred to themselves as Romans. So there's that.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:50 AM on January 27, 2023 [8 favorites]
Contrary to our modern understanding, the ancient Byzantines referred to themselves as Romans. So there's that.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:50 AM on January 27, 2023 [8 favorites]
Tell us how you pronounce your country name and we will do our best to approximate that using the Latin alphabet and English pronunciation. Best I can offer...
posted by jim in austin at 10:50 AM on January 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by jim in austin at 10:50 AM on January 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
I mean, yeah that's reasonable. That's why my country went ahead with Turkiye anyway. Erdogan wants the umlaut? Go invent the time travel machine and make sure his empire didn't lose.
posted by cendawanita at 11:03 AM on January 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by cendawanita at 11:03 AM on January 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
If you only speak English and haven't done much traveling you may be surprised to learn that *most* countries have different names from what's on your English map.
If you only speak [just about ANY language] and haven't done much traveling...
I mean, this is not a uniquely American problem, though of course the name used in English has more reach than the name used in languages with fewer speakers.
To me, this is a case-by-case determination, with multiple competing principles involved that have to be balanced out. I must admit that I am a little surprised at the geopolitical/historical naivete behind the assumption I'm seeing in some of the comments here that "of course the people here call themselves one thing, just like an individual person does, and it's an easily determined consensus," something even the 19th-century English imperialists who caused so many of the worst nomenclature problems wouldn't have thought. The Burma/Myanmar issue has been known in the West since I was a leftist teenager [x] decades ago.
posted by praemunire at 11:03 AM on January 27, 2023 [14 favorites]
If you only speak [just about ANY language] and haven't done much traveling...
I mean, this is not a uniquely American problem, though of course the name used in English has more reach than the name used in languages with fewer speakers.
To me, this is a case-by-case determination, with multiple competing principles involved that have to be balanced out. I must admit that I am a little surprised at the geopolitical/historical naivete behind the assumption I'm seeing in some of the comments here that "of course the people here call themselves one thing, just like an individual person does, and it's an easily determined consensus," something even the 19th-century English imperialists who caused so many of the worst nomenclature problems wouldn't have thought. The Burma/Myanmar issue has been known in the West since I was a leftist teenager [x] decades ago.
posted by praemunire at 11:03 AM on January 27, 2023 [14 favorites]
So do you spell Côte d'Ivoire Cote dIvoire? That's probably a good test actually whether ones objection is practical, conservatism, or political.
TIL: ü and u are different letters in the Turkish alphabet which has 29 characters. I had assumed it was like French which still has the same 26 character alphabet as English and the diacritics are modifiers.
posted by Mitheral at 11:04 AM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
TIL: ü and u are different letters in the Turkish alphabet which has 29 characters. I had assumed it was like French which still has the same 26 character alphabet as English and the diacritics are modifiers.
posted by Mitheral at 11:04 AM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
If the ü is a letter in the Turkish alphabet separate from u, then English ü is just as wrong as English u from a literalist perspective, and the question, at least from an orthographic/phonetic perspective, is which is more likely to prompt a correct(er) pronunciation from an English speaker, which is a hard question, since most people who don't have some familiarity with continental Germanic languages have no idea how to pronounce any sort of ü.
posted by praemunire at 11:07 AM on January 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 11:07 AM on January 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
Contrary to our modern understanding, the ancient Byzantines referred to themselves as Romans. So there's that.
/pedant Tbf, we're talking about names for countries rather than peoples here (as Erdoğan et al. have, as far as I am aware, yet to formally request that we identify them as Türks or even representatives of the Türkish government). And Byzantion was occasionally used during the Byzantine period to refer to the city—as well as (perhaps) to the Empire as a whole! But yeah, the point still stands.
Like, sure, the article is being written and read from the perspective of, oh those arrogant Americans. But me, and people from countries like mine, are also not Turkish, don't use the same Turkish characters (we don't have the umlaut at all), so what are we? Arrogant as well? I stand ready for the Viets to remind the Anglosphere how their latin-spelled name OUGHT to be spelled.
Honestly, this makes me wonder whether similar requests are being made of countries that don't use the Latin alphabet. Are Russians considering switching to Тӱркие (or however you'd type it in Cyrillic)? What about Japanese—how do you even begin to modify トルコ to bring it closer to the Turkish? One of the reason Latin-script countries are being singled out here is that they're close enough to Turkish Latin to make such a change feasible, in a way that it might not be with more distinct writing systems.
posted by the tartare yolk at 11:21 AM on January 27, 2023 [9 favorites]
/pedant Tbf, we're talking about names for countries rather than peoples here (as Erdoğan et al. have, as far as I am aware, yet to formally request that we identify them as Türks or even representatives of the Türkish government). And Byzantion was occasionally used during the Byzantine period to refer to the city—as well as (perhaps) to the Empire as a whole! But yeah, the point still stands.
Like, sure, the article is being written and read from the perspective of, oh those arrogant Americans. But me, and people from countries like mine, are also not Turkish, don't use the same Turkish characters (we don't have the umlaut at all), so what are we? Arrogant as well? I stand ready for the Viets to remind the Anglosphere how their latin-spelled name OUGHT to be spelled.
Honestly, this makes me wonder whether similar requests are being made of countries that don't use the Latin alphabet. Are Russians considering switching to Тӱркие (or however you'd type it in Cyrillic)? What about Japanese—how do you even begin to modify トルコ to bring it closer to the Turkish? One of the reason Latin-script countries are being singled out here is that they're close enough to Turkish Latin to make such a change feasible, in a way that it might not be with more distinct writing systems.
posted by the tartare yolk at 11:21 AM on January 27, 2023 [9 favorites]
> most people who don't have some familiarity with continental Germanic languages have no idea how to pronounce any sort of ü.
posted by automatronic at 11:22 AM on January 27, 2023 [49 favorites]
When we came up with the name, we didn’t even know what umlauts were. I can remember it like it was yesterday. We were drinking Löwenbräu, and when we decided to call ourselves Mötley Crüe, we put some umlauts in there because we thought it made us look European. We had no idea that it was a pronunciation thing. When we finally went to Germany, the crowds were chanting, “Mutley Cruh! Mutley Cruh! “ We couldn’t figure out why the fuck they were doing that.- Vince Neil, in a 2009 interview for Vanity Fair.
posted by automatronic at 11:22 AM on January 27, 2023 [49 favorites]
I try to use correct pronunciations for foreign words (although sometimes in English that seems to be incorrect usage).
But I don't think it's a good thing to moralize about. There's too many countries and too many languages, and a lot of languages are separated by phonological gaps that make it very hard for speakers of one to make the sounds of the other. In say a 5-mile radius from me, probably dozens of different first languages are spoken. It might be a cool project to try to learn how all of them sound, but other ways of being respectful are much more important.
Also lots of languages include wide variation in pronunciation, so that what is recognized as "correct" pronunciation can be more like "the pronunciation that's congenial to a dominant political or ethnic fraction."
Of course, you can be rude or disrespectful by mispronouncing something, especially if you make a show out of not trying to get it right. But also it's too easy in this context to mistake sophistication for something morally substantial.
posted by grobstein at 11:23 AM on January 27, 2023 [22 favorites]
But I don't think it's a good thing to moralize about. There's too many countries and too many languages, and a lot of languages are separated by phonological gaps that make it very hard for speakers of one to make the sounds of the other. In say a 5-mile radius from me, probably dozens of different first languages are spoken. It might be a cool project to try to learn how all of them sound, but other ways of being respectful are much more important.
Also lots of languages include wide variation in pronunciation, so that what is recognized as "correct" pronunciation can be more like "the pronunciation that's congenial to a dominant political or ethnic fraction."
Of course, you can be rude or disrespectful by mispronouncing something, especially if you make a show out of not trying to get it right. But also it's too easy in this context to mistake sophistication for something morally substantial.
posted by grobstein at 11:23 AM on January 27, 2023 [22 favorites]
This is a common tech problem for older systems but even the language we use in the US to talk about it is problematic. There's nothing "special" about the ü in Türkiye except that it's not an ASCII character and thus difficult for some computer systems that need updating.
I note that even after we get computer updates, our database gets even worse (I think we're on version 9 and a version 12 exists), and we lost so much functionality going from 8 to 9 that we put off all updates until absolutely forced to. Literally we have been arguing for 20 years to get programming to stop cutting off long names and somehow this still never happens. Umlauts? Hahahahahah.
I don't care on adding "iye" onto the word, that's fine, we can certainly figure out what place they are referring to with that, but I would not make promises on a use of umlauts. I can also guarantee my work won't be changing the spelling of the country in the system. I am reasonably suspecting that the US government probably doesn't have the nicest, latest and greatest in technology so this may be an issue for them too, which is why I suspect there may be hesitation.
On another note, this is reminding me of my aunt and uncle's friends from a country that frankly, they prefer to say they are "Persian" rather than "Iranian." I'm never sure what to make of that.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:24 AM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
I note that even after we get computer updates, our database gets even worse (I think we're on version 9 and a version 12 exists), and we lost so much functionality going from 8 to 9 that we put off all updates until absolutely forced to. Literally we have been arguing for 20 years to get programming to stop cutting off long names and somehow this still never happens. Umlauts? Hahahahahah.
I don't care on adding "iye" onto the word, that's fine, we can certainly figure out what place they are referring to with that, but I would not make promises on a use of umlauts. I can also guarantee my work won't be changing the spelling of the country in the system. I am reasonably suspecting that the US government probably doesn't have the nicest, latest and greatest in technology so this may be an issue for them too, which is why I suspect there may be hesitation.
On another note, this is reminding me of my aunt and uncle's friends from a country that frankly, they prefer to say they are "Persian" rather than "Iranian." I'm never sure what to make of that.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:24 AM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
My god-daughter is named Chloë. Yes it's a pain to type (in Windows for no good reason. Mac OS is great at this), but without the diacritic, her name would read "Clo". Calling accented characters "special" is a very US english-centered view of the world.
posted by Popular Ethics at 11:30 AM on January 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Popular Ethics at 11:30 AM on January 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
Jenfullmoon: this isn’t the reasoning everyone uses, but for me it’s this- Persian is an ethnicity, Iran is a nationality (which encompasses a great number of ethnicities). Because I was born in the USA, I identify with my ethnicity, Persian, and not the country, Iran. But people have all sorts of reasons for picking either (including distancing themselves from the “Islamic Republic”)
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 11:32 AM on January 27, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 11:32 AM on January 27, 2023 [8 favorites]
Some of us are old enough to remember when Mumbai was Bombay, or Beijing was Peking. This should be accepted uncontroversially.
Perhaps ironically, it's still Pekin in Turkish (or Türkiye Türkçesi, I guess). It's also Peking (or similar) in a bunch of other languages, including German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese.
posted by jedicus at 11:35 AM on January 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
Perhaps ironically, it's still Pekin in Turkish (or Türkiye Türkçesi, I guess). It's also Peking (or similar) in a bunch of other languages, including German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese.
posted by jedicus at 11:35 AM on January 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
A have a pic somewhere, pulled from a Québec-oriented group dedicated to mistranslations, that shows a garment label that reads FABRIQUE EN DINDE. I do dig it up and re-post it around every November.
posted by gimonca at 11:41 AM on January 27, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by gimonca at 11:41 AM on January 27, 2023 [12 favorites]
Turino versus Turin
That one's a little more complicated because Turin is actually the endonym in the local Piedmontese language.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 11:42 AM on January 27, 2023 [12 favorites]
That one's a little more complicated because Turin is actually the endonym in the local Piedmontese language.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 11:42 AM on January 27, 2023 [12 favorites]
Also: I've set my default keyboard on Windows-based machines to ENG INTL or US INTL for many years, never looked back.
posted by gimonca at 11:52 AM on January 27, 2023
posted by gimonca at 11:52 AM on January 27, 2023
My keyboard has this magic button. I don't know what it's called. But I press the magic button, and then I press u and then I press " and POOF I have a ü. Smartphones you can hold and press for variations on a letter.
I love the magic button. It makes it easy to type the names of people I work on a shared project with. I've always been confused as to why we use exonyms for other countries; people learn entire other languages all the time, learning to pronounce a new word is manageable.
Generally speaking, I think the most commonly-used names of every country, correctly sung in their own languages, would make an excellent pop children's album.
posted by aniola at 11:53 AM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
I love the magic button. It makes it easy to type the names of people I work on a shared project with. I've always been confused as to why we use exonyms for other countries; people learn entire other languages all the time, learning to pronounce a new word is manageable.
Generally speaking, I think the most commonly-used names of every country, correctly sung in their own languages, would make an excellent pop children's album.
posted by aniola at 11:53 AM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
Not only am I for this, I also strongly urge my fellow Ämericans to consider this.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:55 AM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:55 AM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
We should not give in to the demands of the brutal colonizing power.
29/05/53 NEVAR FORGET!
posted by thatwhichfalls at 11:58 AM on January 27, 2023
29/05/53 NEVAR FORGET!
posted by thatwhichfalls at 11:58 AM on January 27, 2023
The etymology of Byzantium is unknown. It has been suggested that the name is of Thracian origin.[4] It may be derived from the Thracian personal name Byzas which means "he-goat".[5][6] Ancient Greek legend refers to the Greek king Byzas, the leader of the Megarian colonists and founder of the city.
Byzas? Bezos? Coincidence?!?
We are through the looking glass, people.
posted by slogger at 12:05 PM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
Byzas? Bezos? Coincidence?!?
We are through the looking glass, people.
posted by slogger at 12:05 PM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
Chicken Kiev, on the other hand, will never be called Chicken Kyiv for obvious reasons.Well meaning as they may be, those people are ignoramuses who never heard of President George Herbert Walker Bush's infamous Chicken Kiev Speech. They would be well advised to hold off on that for a bit. The speech was never forgotten in Ukraine.
About that...
Upon review: Or not as the case may be. I am sure the spelling has not been changed in Ukrainian.
posted by y2karl at 12:08 PM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
most people who don't have some familiarity with continental Germanic languages have no idea how to pronounce any sort of ü.
Note that Turkish is not a Germanic language. It's a Turkic language, not Indo-European. Fortunately the writing happens to be compatible. I don't speak Turkish but from what I can find the Turkish ü vowel is a closed front rounded vowel, like the German ü, so the pronunciation is fairly close. But written language are always a distorted mirror of how words are pronounced, there's no general rule of what a diaeresis or umlaut might mean on any particular letter.
While I'm being pedantic, Turkish also has two kinds of letters Americans would call "I": dotted İ i and dotless I ı. That causes havoc with a lot of software where if you capitalize and then uncapitalize the letter it changes: ı to I to i. IIRC the solution for this is locale-aware capitalization rules that handle Turkish correctly, but those aren't always properly used.
(Let's all say a brief thanks to emoji, whose popularity has resulted in fixing a lot of broken software. Americans don't necessarily notice when words in other languages get corrupted by software but if we can't text 🍆 we complain loudly.)
posted by Nelson at 12:09 PM on January 27, 2023 [12 favorites]
Note that Turkish is not a Germanic language. It's a Turkic language, not Indo-European. Fortunately the writing happens to be compatible. I don't speak Turkish but from what I can find the Turkish ü vowel is a closed front rounded vowel, like the German ü, so the pronunciation is fairly close. But written language are always a distorted mirror of how words are pronounced, there's no general rule of what a diaeresis or umlaut might mean on any particular letter.
While I'm being pedantic, Turkish also has two kinds of letters Americans would call "I": dotted İ i and dotless I ı. That causes havoc with a lot of software where if you capitalize and then uncapitalize the letter it changes: ı to I to i. IIRC the solution for this is locale-aware capitalization rules that handle Turkish correctly, but those aren't always properly used.
(Let's all say a brief thanks to emoji, whose popularity has resulted in fixing a lot of broken software. Americans don't necessarily notice when words in other languages get corrupted by software but if we can't text 🍆 we complain loudly.)
posted by Nelson at 12:09 PM on January 27, 2023 [12 favorites]
What this article doesn't mention about the "unflattering" comparisons to the bird called a Turkey is that the bird was actually named after the country as it was imported to Europe through the Ottoman empire.
Wait until they find out what the bird is called in Portuguese.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 12:12 PM on January 27, 2023
Wait until they find out what the bird is called in Portuguese.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 12:12 PM on January 27, 2023
I'd like to think that unless there is a strong reason not to, we respect the wishes of the inhabitants of the city or country to use a particular name. So my knee-jerk reaction here would be to respect the Turkish government's wishes.
The longstanding civil war with Turkish Kurds makes any governmental action privileging Turkish over other languages of Turkey suspect.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 12:14 PM on January 27, 2023 [16 favorites]
The longstanding civil war with Turkish Kurds makes any governmental action privileging Turkish over other languages of Turkey suspect.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 12:14 PM on January 27, 2023 [16 favorites]
And often those names are better, especially in Italy. (Napoli versus Naples, Firenze versus Florence, Turino versus Turin, etc).
Ahem.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 12:19 PM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
Ahem.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 12:19 PM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
Note that Turkish is not a Germanic language
...I know? That's...kind of extremely obvious? My point is that if at least U.S.-born English-speaking people have any familiarity with trying to pronounce a letter drawn like a ü at all, it's probably because they took German in high school or something. It's not an English spelling, and there's only around half a million Americans of Turkish descent to have a family history of it. Otherwise it might as well be an η or something.
Phonemes and graphemes almost never match exactly, but if your goal is to have people pronounce a word a certain way, introducing a semi-arbitrary symbol for a phoneme doesn't necessarily help. If I was trying to get Americans to pronounce a rounded front vowel, I would probably spell it "oo," though of course that's not fool-proof (ha! did not do that on purpose) either.
posted by praemunire at 12:22 PM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
...I know? That's...kind of extremely obvious? My point is that if at least U.S.-born English-speaking people have any familiarity with trying to pronounce a letter drawn like a ü at all, it's probably because they took German in high school or something. It's not an English spelling, and there's only around half a million Americans of Turkish descent to have a family history of it. Otherwise it might as well be an η or something.
Phonemes and graphemes almost never match exactly, but if your goal is to have people pronounce a word a certain way, introducing a semi-arbitrary symbol for a phoneme doesn't necessarily help. If I was trying to get Americans to pronounce a rounded front vowel, I would probably spell it "oo," though of course that's not fool-proof (ha! did not do that on purpose) either.
posted by praemunire at 12:22 PM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
I have no problem changing to the new spelling—which isn’t that different in pronunciation from the Spanish Turquía, which also isn’t a synonym for the bird we’d be better off calling by the Nahautl-derived Spanish name “guajolote”—but I do want to know if Erdogan (can’t type the proper characters on my iPhone) plans to change the official name of Greece in his own language from Yunanistan to Hellas.
posted by Just the one swan, actually at 12:22 PM on January 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by Just the one swan, actually at 12:22 PM on January 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
Czechia created the short term "Czechia" for English and international usage because it recognized that "Česko" or the long name "Česká republika" wasn't appropriate for non-Czech speakers.
This demand by Turkey to change its name in English -- and English only -- to a word with a letter that doesn't exist in English is absurd. The official name in German is still "Republik Türkei", not now "Republik Türkiye", in French still "république de Turquie", etc.
There's also the fact that this is a move to appease the nationalists ahead of an election. In a country where speaking Kurdish in public or using Kurdish was outlawed for many decades, while the mountainsides were decorated with the slogan "NE MUTLU TÜRKÜM DIYENE" ("how happy is he who can call himself a 'Türk'"), many in Turkey, speaking in Turkish, won't call themselves "Turkish" (Ben Türk'üm) but instead say that they're from the country Turkiye (Ben Türkiyeliyim"). Insisting that the world call 'Turkey' 'Türkiye' could be seen as a way of further invalidating Kurdish-Turkish, Armenian-Turkish, or other ethnic identities.
posted by Theiform at 12:27 PM on January 27, 2023 [27 favorites]
This demand by Turkey to change its name in English -- and English only -- to a word with a letter that doesn't exist in English is absurd. The official name in German is still "Republik Türkei", not now "Republik Türkiye", in French still "république de Turquie", etc.
There's also the fact that this is a move to appease the nationalists ahead of an election. In a country where speaking Kurdish in public or using Kurdish was outlawed for many decades, while the mountainsides were decorated with the slogan "NE MUTLU TÜRKÜM DIYENE" ("how happy is he who can call himself a 'Türk'"), many in Turkey, speaking in Turkish, won't call themselves "Turkish" (Ben Türk'üm) but instead say that they're from the country Turkiye (Ben Türkiyeliyim"). Insisting that the world call 'Turkey' 'Türkiye' could be seen as a way of further invalidating Kurdish-Turkish, Armenian-Turkish, or other ethnic identities.
posted by Theiform at 12:27 PM on January 27, 2023 [27 favorites]
The umlaut is a pain in the ass to type
It is? I’ve working on a computer for more than 30 years and I can’t think of a time when typing an umlaut was difficult. Maybe wayyyyyy back in the mists of time it was, but certainly every major OS of the last 20 or so years supported easy use of umlauts.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:29 PM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
It is? I’ve working on a computer for more than 30 years and I can’t think of a time when typing an umlaut was difficult. Maybe wayyyyyy back in the mists of time it was, but certainly every major OS of the last 20 or so years supported easy use of umlauts.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:29 PM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
(Also, the Turkish word for the bird is hindi and I haven't heard anything about Turkey now moving to renname the official Turkish name Hindistan to India...)
posted by Theiform at 12:34 PM on January 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Theiform at 12:34 PM on January 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
Wait until they find out what the bird is called in Portuguese.
Sparkling chickens, as only birds actually from Turkey can be called turkeys.
posted by star gentle uterus at 12:40 PM on January 27, 2023 [16 favorites]
Sparkling chickens, as only birds actually from Turkey can be called turkeys.
posted by star gentle uterus at 12:40 PM on January 27, 2023 [16 favorites]
Bhārat, surely?
posted by Meatbomb at 12:40 PM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Meatbomb at 12:40 PM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
Christ on a cannonball, Erdogan, do you have any fucking idea how many ways Americans try to pronounce/spell "Channukah"? Look, no judgement and all but good luck with that
posted by phooky at 12:52 PM on January 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by phooky at 12:52 PM on January 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
There's a general election in less than 4 months. Everything Erdogan does and has been doing internationally since the opposition got their act together in the wake of the 2018 elections has been geared towards his domestic audience.
Muscular to belligerent visibility on the world stage is a big winner with his base - and beyond - and he's an absolute past master of trolling Western democracies to set up these situations and draw them out for as much coverage as possible. Sweden and Finland are the current never-ending tray of baklava for him, the Türkiye thing is a sprinkling of crushed pistachios on top.
posted by protorp at 12:52 PM on January 27, 2023 [16 favorites]
Muscular to belligerent visibility on the world stage is a big winner with his base - and beyond - and he's an absolute past master of trolling Western democracies to set up these situations and draw them out for as much coverage as possible. Sweden and Finland are the current never-ending tray of baklava for him, the Türkiye thing is a sprinkling of crushed pistachios on top.
posted by protorp at 12:52 PM on January 27, 2023 [16 favorites]
Bhārat, surely?
As I understand it, that term also is viewed by some as a nationalist term meant to favor a viewing of India as a country founded in Hinduism (and not for the Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, etc who live there). Mind you, I'd be all in favor too of dropping the colonialist "America" and just leaving the US's official name as just "United States", if I can add another can to this politically-fraught plate of bean names.
posted by Theiform at 12:53 PM on January 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
As I understand it, that term also is viewed by some as a nationalist term meant to favor a viewing of India as a country founded in Hinduism (and not for the Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, etc who live there). Mind you, I'd be all in favor too of dropping the colonialist "America" and just leaving the US's official name as just "United States", if I can add another can to this politically-fraught plate of bean names.
posted by Theiform at 12:53 PM on January 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
Fortunately the writing happens to be compatible.
Until the 1920s, Turkish was written with a script derived from Arabic. As part of Atatürk's modernization efforts, this was replaced with a Latin-derived alphabet. So basically, it's compatible by design.
Until the 1960s or 70s, the name of Romania in English was usually spelled Rumania or Roumania. It's my understanding that the standardization of "o" was at the request of the Romanian government, which wanted to emphasize ties to the west. (The name of Romania in Romanian is actually "România".)
posted by Slothrup at 12:54 PM on January 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
Until the 1920s, Turkish was written with a script derived from Arabic. As part of Atatürk's modernization efforts, this was replaced with a Latin-derived alphabet. So basically, it's compatible by design.
Until the 1960s or 70s, the name of Romania in English was usually spelled Rumania or Roumania. It's my understanding that the standardization of "o" was at the request of the Romanian government, which wanted to emphasize ties to the west. (The name of Romania in Romanian is actually "România".)
posted by Slothrup at 12:54 PM on January 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
I've always thought it would be great if we all called each place by what the people there call it. (As a child, mostly so I didn't have to memorize the different names in French, and whether they're male or female, which I will never understand.) But as an adult I recognize that that's not always a simple thing to determine. If Kurdish speakers call the country Tirkiye rather than Türkiye then respecting this wish of Erdogan's becomes a political question, and I'd rather not seem to be siding with Erdogan against the Kurds.
posted by joannemerriam at 1:08 PM on January 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by joannemerriam at 1:08 PM on January 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
If Erdogan spoke of the importance of feeding destitute orphans, you'd have a good reason for looking into the case for cooking orphans. It's Erdogan.
Exonyms are always somewhat problematic, and sometimes they are problematic enough that they should be dropped. But this is Erdogan. So meh.
posted by ocschwar at 1:36 PM on January 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
Exonyms are always somewhat problematic, and sometimes they are problematic enough that they should be dropped. But this is Erdogan. So meh.
posted by ocschwar at 1:36 PM on January 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
It often strikes me how un-Japanese "Japan" sounds. The sounds in it and Jipangu etc. are harsh and unpleasant and are not helped at all by the sharp "a" of English pronunciations. It doesn't feel right, not something you'd choose for yourself...
But then I realize people would butcher "Nihon" as well so maybe the endonym-exonym combo is fine.
You can ask for people to refer to you a certain way but you won't always get what you want.
Plenty of other hills to die on, dumpster fires to put out, trolls to outwit...
posted by Sockin'inthefreeworld at 1:44 PM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
But then I realize people would butcher "Nihon" as well so maybe the endonym-exonym combo is fine.
You can ask for people to refer to you a certain way but you won't always get what you want.
Plenty of other hills to die on, dumpster fires to put out, trolls to outwit...
posted by Sockin'inthefreeworld at 1:44 PM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
It's utterly hypocritical, as it would be in the case of most any country. This is not an "arrogant Americans" thing, this is the case is practically all languages (I won't say absolutely all, because there may be some I'm unfamiliar with that don't do this), they all use names for countries and places that work in that language and is reasonably easy to pronounce. So Deutschland is Germany, Alemania, Allemagne, Germania, Tyskland, and yes, in Turkish, Almanya. The USA in Turkish is Amerika Birleşik Devletleri, or ABD. For a fun example, Copenhagen is "Kopenhag" in Turkish, but "København" in Danish, and pronouncing that correctly is probably beyond anyone who's not a native Dane (I, as a Norwegian, can do a decent approximation, but a native Dane would probably find all kinds of fault with it, and in Norwegian, it's written the same, but pronounced quite differently).
This stuff is just not workable, and it's not about a country's self-determination, it's the opposite, it's about the users of a language's right to decide how that language works. Luckily, no one's actually going to do what Erdogan demands here, so it'll all come to nothing.
This is just silly nationalist posturing from a nationalist pseudofascist, and should be ignored. As someone said above, if Erdogan demands something, as a rule, do the opposite.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 1:52 PM on January 27, 2023 [20 favorites]
This stuff is just not workable, and it's not about a country's self-determination, it's the opposite, it's about the users of a language's right to decide how that language works. Luckily, no one's actually going to do what Erdogan demands here, so it'll all come to nothing.
This is just silly nationalist posturing from a nationalist pseudofascist, and should be ignored. As someone said above, if Erdogan demands something, as a rule, do the opposite.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 1:52 PM on January 27, 2023 [20 favorites]
Linguistic note: Turkish ü is the same as German ü and Mandarin ü, and French u; IPA [y]. The article calls it "guttural", which is very wrong. Guttural sounds are pronounced in the back of the oral cavity; ü is fronted. An ü sounds like i as in machine, but with the lips rounded.
If you're curious, in Erdoğan, the ğ is not a g— it lengthens the previous vowel.
Snarky note: Can the Germans write it "Tuerkiye"? Can the French write "Turkiye" since that gets the vowel right?
posted by zompist at 1:52 PM on January 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
If you're curious, in Erdoğan, the ğ is not a g— it lengthens the previous vowel.
Snarky note: Can the Germans write it "Tuerkiye"? Can the French write "Turkiye" since that gets the vowel right?
posted by zompist at 1:52 PM on January 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
As a Turk, who has lived his entire life in İstanbul (I don't type "Istanbul" because I have a Turkish keyboard, you are more than welcome to just type Istanbul because... practicality?), I find this political move to be just silly. Being a Turk (or Türkiyeli) shouldn't automatically make me right but this demand by Erdoğan is most likely motivated by showing his audience how he flexes muscles in the international arena before the elections. I'm just rolling my eyes so hard, my skull hurts, honestly. I don't care either way, I speak 4 languages and when the right time comes, I will never speak Turkish ever again. Türkiye... You owe me another life.
posted by cihan at 2:06 PM on January 27, 2023 [40 favorites]
posted by cihan at 2:06 PM on January 27, 2023 [40 favorites]
Snarky note: Can the Germans write it "Tuerkiye"? Can the French write "Turkiye" since that gets the vowel right?
Actually, that doesn't get the vowel right, that letter in Turkish is not pronounced as a "Y" sound like in German, but rather, as, surprise, a "U" sound. So the most intuitive pronunciation for those familiar with German is wrong.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:08 PM on January 27, 2023
Actually, that doesn't get the vowel right, that letter in Turkish is not pronounced as a "Y" sound like in German, but rather, as, surprise, a "U" sound. So the most intuitive pronunciation for those familiar with German is wrong.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:08 PM on January 27, 2023
Contrary to our modern understanding, the ancient Byzantines referred to themselves as Romans.
yes, and according to wikipedia, one source for this could be an etruscan word for "teat", referring to the legendary wolf feeding romulus so
so it's animals all the way down
also it had been byzantium before constantine established constantinople and furthermore, there was a sultanate of rum in the 11th century - and many citizens of the ottoman empire called themselves rumi ...
that area of the world is really complicated
posted by pyramid termite at 2:10 PM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
yes, and according to wikipedia, one source for this could be an etruscan word for "teat", referring to the legendary wolf feeding romulus so
so it's animals all the way down
also it had been byzantium before constantine established constantinople and furthermore, there was a sultanate of rum in the 11th century - and many citizens of the ottoman empire called themselves rumi ...
that area of the world is really complicated
posted by pyramid termite at 2:10 PM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
that letter in Turkish is not pronounced as a "Y" sound like in German, but rather, as, surprise, a "U" sound.
Er, what? I did check this, first in Comrie's The World's Major Languages, then in Wikipedia, then in The World's Writing Systems, p. 683, then this Turkish grammar. All say Turkish ü is IPA y, not u.
posted by zompist at 2:25 PM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
Er, what? I did check this, first in Comrie's The World's Major Languages, then in Wikipedia, then in The World's Writing Systems, p. 683, then this Turkish grammar. All say Turkish ü is IPA y, not u.
posted by zompist at 2:25 PM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
Bhārat, surely?
As I understand it, that term also is viewed by some as a nationalist term meant to favor a viewing of India as a country founded in Hinduism (and not for the Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, etc who live there).
Came in to say this. You've articulated it far better than I, though I ironically hold that passport. Hindustan and its variations is what the central Asian invaders (for ex. the Moghuls) have always called it.
Here's an old song that may be apropos to this conversation.
And, hell yeah, umlauts are a pain to type with the US keyboard, and I've gone and registered a new business with a Suomeksi name that contains an umlaut in the middle so I keep the name saved in a text file on the desktop to copy pasta all the time. Ditto its street address.
posted by infini at 2:32 PM on January 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
As I understand it, that term also is viewed by some as a nationalist term meant to favor a viewing of India as a country founded in Hinduism (and not for the Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, etc who live there).
Came in to say this. You've articulated it far better than I, though I ironically hold that passport. Hindustan and its variations is what the central Asian invaders (for ex. the Moghuls) have always called it.
Here's an old song that may be apropos to this conversation.
And, hell yeah, umlauts are a pain to type with the US keyboard, and I've gone and registered a new business with a Suomeksi name that contains an umlaut in the middle so I keep the name saved in a text file on the desktop to copy pasta all the time. Ditto its street address.
posted by infini at 2:32 PM on January 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
Being a Turk (or Türkiyeli) shouldn't automatically make me right but this demand by Erdoğan is most likely motivated by showing his audience how he flexes muscles in the international arena before the elections.
*Especially* while negotiating the NATO kerfuffles up here near the North pole.
posted by infini at 2:36 PM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
*Especially* while negotiating the NATO kerfuffles up here near the North pole.
posted by infini at 2:36 PM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
so it's animals all the way down
eek, one more comment
yesterday i got the original citation for 'turtles all the way' down from a professor
Clifford Geertz
posted by infini at 2:39 PM on January 27, 2023
eek, one more comment
yesterday i got the original citation for 'turtles all the way' down from a professor
Clifford Geertz
posted by infini at 2:39 PM on January 27, 2023
Er, what? I did check this, first in Comrie's The World's Major Languages, then in Wikipedia, then in The World's Writing Systems, p. 683, then this Turkish grammar. All say Turkish ü is IPA y, not u.
I might be wrong here, but I decided to listen to some Turkish pronunciation guides, and all of them had the sound at least closer to a U than to a Ü to my ears. I think it might in reality be kind of in the middle, which would explain why it's transliterated as U (English, Spanish) in some languages and Y in others (Norwegian, German (ish)).
For instance, listen to the pronunciation of "Türkiye Cumhuriyeti" (Turkish Republic) on Wikipedia.. The first wovel of that is definitely not the same as a German Ü, and sounds much closer to a U to my ears.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:53 PM on January 27, 2023
I might be wrong here, but I decided to listen to some Turkish pronunciation guides, and all of them had the sound at least closer to a U than to a Ü to my ears. I think it might in reality be kind of in the middle, which would explain why it's transliterated as U (English, Spanish) in some languages and Y in others (Norwegian, German (ish)).
For instance, listen to the pronunciation of "Türkiye Cumhuriyeti" (Turkish Republic) on Wikipedia.. The first wovel of that is definitely not the same as a German Ü, and sounds much closer to a U to my ears.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:53 PM on January 27, 2023
Here's another video from YouTube, from a "Learn Turkish" channel, where "Türkiye" is pretty clearly pronounced with what sounds to me to be closer to u than y.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 3:16 PM on January 27, 2023
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 3:16 PM on January 27, 2023
Vowel sounds are hard. My wife laughs at me every time I try to make the Romanian sound "â" because of how wrong I am, but to my ears I'm making the same sound that she is. I grew up English/German bilingual, but that sound is not in either of those and apparently my brain has "optimized away" my ability to hear it.
posted by Slothrup at 3:34 PM on January 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Slothrup at 3:34 PM on January 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
I remember, back in 2015-2017 or so, a lot of my savvier friends in leftist circles cautioning that reactionary political movements have a nasty habit of appropriating left-wing terminology and using it to justify their own shitty behaviors—in part to mock what gullible suckers they think leftists are.
Nazis demanding safe spaces, therefore, was no surprise. But I've got to admit: it's still wild to me that a literal dictator pulls a move right out of the Nationalism 101 handbook, and they can still somehow trick folks into claiming it's colonialism not to play along, while comparing his decision to somebody's coming out as trans.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 3:38 PM on January 27, 2023 [27 favorites]
Nazis demanding safe spaces, therefore, was no surprise. But I've got to admit: it's still wild to me that a literal dictator pulls a move right out of the Nationalism 101 handbook, and they can still somehow trick folks into claiming it's colonialism not to play along, while comparing his decision to somebody's coming out as trans.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 3:38 PM on January 27, 2023 [27 favorites]
Like: again, this is literally the kind of "[Our Country] First!" rhetoric that defines nationalist fascist movements. How is it that, after over half a decade of panic about America's slide towards nationalism and fascism—specifically its xenophobic "America First" attitudes—we're still unable to recognize something like this when it's this blatant?
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 3:40 PM on January 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 3:40 PM on January 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
If it means anything I've met more than one person in the country who refuses to use Myanmar.
Shortly after the military takeover it was fashionable among the literati to indicate their disapproval of this regime change by still referring to the country as Burma. Somewhere along the line, this has changed.
this makes me wonder whether similar requests are being made of countries that don't use the Latin alphabet
Look into Pinyin, the now-official way of expressing Mandarin Chinese with Latin letters, it'll blow your mind. The simplest of the new rules we have to learn is x = sh (but not really) and there's a lot more. Another is using the umlaut for distinction between the u and the ü sounds, as in the German.
posted by Rash at 4:10 PM on January 27, 2023
Shortly after the military takeover it was fashionable among the literati to indicate their disapproval of this regime change by still referring to the country as Burma. Somewhere along the line, this has changed.
this makes me wonder whether similar requests are being made of countries that don't use the Latin alphabet
Look into Pinyin, the now-official way of expressing Mandarin Chinese with Latin letters, it'll blow your mind. The simplest of the new rules we have to learn is x = sh (but not really) and there's a lot more. Another is using the umlaut for distinction between the u and the ü sounds, as in the German.
posted by Rash at 4:10 PM on January 27, 2023
Can the Germans write it "Tuerkiye"?
I believe they could but would never have to because a regular German keyboard includes the umlauted vowels as separate keys, as well as the ß.
And a note about the source of the umlaut, at least in German, a Lehrer of mine explained it to me as after a time, the trailing 'e' in the 'ue' was gradually moved above the "u" and was eventually replaced with the two dots. (Not sure if that's also true of the Latin œ and æ.)
posted by Rash at 4:25 PM on January 27, 2023
I believe they could but would never have to because a regular German keyboard includes the umlauted vowels as separate keys, as well as the ß.
And a note about the source of the umlaut, at least in German, a Lehrer of mine explained it to me as after a time, the trailing 'e' in the 'ue' was gradually moved above the "u" and was eventually replaced with the two dots. (Not sure if that's also true of the Latin œ and æ.)
posted by Rash at 4:25 PM on January 27, 2023
Speaking of pinyin — the old-school solution for inputting ü on a keyboard that doesn't have it is to replace it with v, e.g. nv3 for nǚ (女). Therefore I propose Tvrkiye as an alternative spelling.
posted by cultanthropologist at 4:31 PM on January 27, 2023
posted by cultanthropologist at 4:31 PM on January 27, 2023
the trailing 'e' in the 'ue' was gradually moved above the "u" and was eventually replaced with the two dots
Neat, I've never heard that before. But I totally find it plausible given that the circumflex in French often indicates a "swallowed" S:
hôpital = hospital, hôtel = hostel, forêt = forest, coût = cost, côte = coast, château = castle, bâtard = bastard, bête = beast
posted by Slothrup at 4:48 PM on January 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
Neat, I've never heard that before. But I totally find it plausible given that the circumflex in French often indicates a "swallowed" S:
hôpital = hospital, hôtel = hostel, forêt = forest, coût = cost, côte = coast, château = castle, bâtard = bastard, bête = beast
posted by Slothrup at 4:48 PM on January 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
I've been wondering why some news articles changed the spelling to Türkiye - this clears it up. To be honest, I still process it as Turkey when I read it, since I don't speak any languages that use umlauts, so Erdogan is not achieving much here.
posted by wandering zinnia at 4:53 PM on January 27, 2023
posted by wandering zinnia at 4:53 PM on January 27, 2023
My gut feelings on exonyms is influenced by my Eastern European (mostly Hungarian) matrilineal side. I remember as a kid seeing a family tree someone had paid to get made, and seeing relatives with names that sounded like they could be heroes in fantasy book, and being told "That's you're Uncle Frank." They'd Magyaricized the names because the person doing the names was Hungarian; Frank never went by Ferenc a day in his life AFAIK. (I've offered fake example names for internet purposes, if it matters to you.) And we had Anglicized all the names of our still-in-Europe relatives when we had talked about them.
And obviously just saying Hungarian vs. Magyar is a decision. Not that the average American will pronounce Magyar correctly. I certainly don't, I have a tin ear; I don't know what I'm doing wrong but my mother's coaching has apparently had no effect. (Which is, I imagine, another thing that influences my feelings here.)
Similarly I'd find it quixotic and pretty rude to try and tell people what the right Spanish, German or Chinese terms for the "United States" or "America", when people are speaking in their own languages.
I'm not actually claiming my feelings should translate into rules or best practice. I'll follow the crowd on this one. It's just an observation. But as the obvious corollary, I don't think exonyms are inherently wrong or problematic, and I've never seen anyone consistently try to avoid using them. (And as for pronouncing things the way a native would do--hopeless.)
posted by mark k at 4:59 PM on January 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
And obviously just saying Hungarian vs. Magyar is a decision. Not that the average American will pronounce Magyar correctly. I certainly don't, I have a tin ear; I don't know what I'm doing wrong but my mother's coaching has apparently had no effect. (Which is, I imagine, another thing that influences my feelings here.)
Similarly I'd find it quixotic and pretty rude to try and tell people what the right Spanish, German or Chinese terms for the "United States" or "America", when people are speaking in their own languages.
I'm not actually claiming my feelings should translate into rules or best practice. I'll follow the crowd on this one. It's just an observation. But as the obvious corollary, I don't think exonyms are inherently wrong or problematic, and I've never seen anyone consistently try to avoid using them. (And as for pronouncing things the way a native would do--hopeless.)
posted by mark k at 4:59 PM on January 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
I propose Tvrkiye as an alternative spelling
Retvrkiye?
In case you're wondering, "ราชอาณาจักรไทย" means "Thailand"
Okay, but can you help us with the pronunciation of Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit?
Umlauts and diaereses are unfamiliar, but not totally foreign to English-language writing
Strong agree. Frankly, I think someone would have to be naïve to suggest that English is bereft of umlauts.
Then again, there are multiple instances in which I am forbidden from using diacritical marks at work because they will cause our systems to melt down. We can talk about Unicode all we want, but as far as I can tell the global banking system runs on spit, string, COBOL, and like three Big Red foil wrappers.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 5:21 PM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
Retvrkiye?
In case you're wondering, "ราชอาณาจักรไทย" means "Thailand"
Okay, but can you help us with the pronunciation of Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit?
Umlauts and diaereses are unfamiliar, but not totally foreign to English-language writing
Strong agree. Frankly, I think someone would have to be naïve to suggest that English is bereft of umlauts.
Then again, there are multiple instances in which I am forbidden from using diacritical marks at work because they will cause our systems to melt down. We can talk about Unicode all we want, but as far as I can tell the global banking system runs on spit, string, COBOL, and like three Big Red foil wrappers.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 5:21 PM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
we're still unable to recognize something like this when it's this blatant?
There are places in Eastern Europe that literally have names in three or more languages (e.g., German, Polish, Magyar), due to the borders, and various peoples, moving back and forth over them from around 1848-1945. (The city referred to in An Ermine in Czernopol is actually Czernowitz...or Chernivtsi...or Cernăuți...and so on.) Even the endonym is, or was, hotly contested.
Picking up even valid leftist principles with the best of intentions on a forum can lead you awfully astray if you don't read more widely to pick up nuance and historical context. And then the fascists pull one over on you.
posted by praemunire at 5:26 PM on January 27, 2023 [7 favorites]
There are places in Eastern Europe that literally have names in three or more languages (e.g., German, Polish, Magyar), due to the borders, and various peoples, moving back and forth over them from around 1848-1945. (The city referred to in An Ermine in Czernopol is actually Czernowitz...or Chernivtsi...or Cernăuți...and so on.) Even the endonym is, or was, hotly contested.
Picking up even valid leftist principles with the best of intentions on a forum can lead you awfully astray if you don't read more widely to pick up nuance and historical context. And then the fascists pull one over on you.
posted by praemunire at 5:26 PM on January 27, 2023 [7 favorites]
On one hand, Erdogan sucks so blah/grr/whatever to him. On the other, I am a multilingual (US) American teacher of languages. My major personal and professional goal in life is to encourage multilingual and multicultural identities and openness (world peace or at least less war and hate, eh?!) Technically we speak more of intercultural understanding in 2023 but in any case...
Typing the umlaut isn't hard: you're* just being lazy and ethnocentric. Sorry, I love you all but parts of this discussion sound like people wanting to sound cool and worldly but actually sounding ignorant. Let me know if any of you Luddites ;-) need help setting up your keyboards to be more international because my middle schoolers all figured it out and are happy to share. Seriously, the tech savvy youth is glad to help and I'm happy to share what they taught me.
P.S. Germans are pretty aware of at least the basics in Turkish considering that German-Turkish culture is a huge party of German culture and has been for many decades.
*This is not directed at anyone personally but rather a general you as in y'all or people (or "chat" as some of my 8th graders tell me is common now lol.)
posted by smorgasbord at 6:25 PM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
Typing the umlaut isn't hard: you're* just being lazy and ethnocentric. Sorry, I love you all but parts of this discussion sound like people wanting to sound cool and worldly but actually sounding ignorant. Let me know if any of you Luddites ;-) need help setting up your keyboards to be more international because my middle schoolers all figured it out and are happy to share. Seriously, the tech savvy youth is glad to help and I'm happy to share what they taught me.
P.S. Germans are pretty aware of at least the basics in Turkish considering that German-Turkish culture is a huge party of German culture and has been for many decades.
*This is not directed at anyone personally but rather a general you as in y'all or people (or "chat" as some of my 8th graders tell me is common now lol.)
posted by smorgasbord at 6:25 PM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
Did you miss the bit where the renaming the English version of the word into Turkish is a way of diminishing the legitimacy of the Kurdish language and is perhaps the opposite of encouraging "multilingual and multicultural identities and openness."
posted by thatwhichfalls at 6:55 PM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by thatwhichfalls at 6:55 PM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
Did you miss the bit where the renaming the English version of the word into Turkish is a way of diminishing the legitimacy of the Kurdish language and is perhaps the opposite of encouraging "multilingual and multicultural identities and openness."
Nope I sure didn't miss it! Furthermore, as a public schoolteacher in the US with the best of intentions, I am used to being misunderstood and insulted rather than engaged with respectfully. I'm prepared and happy to explain in a way that's easier to understand.
My concern is that, in general in this post-Trump America, we are too quick to reject spellings or wordings that aren't as common or convenient. After all, Trump and Erdogan have a lot in common, eh? This is not about how to spell that particular country. And some people legitimately don't know how easy it is to use so-called "foreign" characters and symbols on standard keyboards! If anyone would like to discuss Kurdish politics in Turkey and the Middle East and beyond, I'd be happy to since being educated and aware of those are certainly part of being an educator who encourages "'multilingual and multicultural identities and openness.'" <3
posted by smorgasbord at 7:05 PM on January 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
Nope I sure didn't miss it! Furthermore, as a public schoolteacher in the US with the best of intentions, I am used to being misunderstood and insulted rather than engaged with respectfully. I'm prepared and happy to explain in a way that's easier to understand.
My concern is that, in general in this post-Trump America, we are too quick to reject spellings or wordings that aren't as common or convenient. After all, Trump and Erdogan have a lot in common, eh? This is not about how to spell that particular country. And some people legitimately don't know how easy it is to use so-called "foreign" characters and symbols on standard keyboards! If anyone would like to discuss Kurdish politics in Turkey and the Middle East and beyond, I'd be happy to since being educated and aware of those are certainly part of being an educator who encourages "'multilingual and multicultural identities and openness.'" <3
posted by smorgasbord at 7:05 PM on January 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
It often strikes me how un-Japanese "Japan" sounds. The sounds in it and Jipangu etc. are harsh and unpleasant and are not helped at all by the sharp "a" of English pronunciations. It doesn't feel right, not something you'd choose for yourself...
But then I realize people would butcher "Nihon" as well so maybe the endonym-exonym combo is fine.
You can ask for people to refer to you a certain way but you won't always get what you want.
a few years ago japan asked that news outlets stop westernizing the name order of japanese citizens (so articles about the prime minister should be about kishida fumio, not fumio kishida) and the response seems to have basically been "yeah, no"
posted by emmling at 7:17 PM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
But then I realize people would butcher "Nihon" as well so maybe the endonym-exonym combo is fine.
You can ask for people to refer to you a certain way but you won't always get what you want.
a few years ago japan asked that news outlets stop westernizing the name order of japanese citizens (so articles about the prime minister should be about kishida fumio, not fumio kishida) and the response seems to have basically been "yeah, no"
posted by emmling at 7:17 PM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
I’m just getting folks around this part of western Canada to remember that we live in Sḵwx̱wúmesh-ulh Temíx̱w (the land of the Squamish people). Once we’ve got that under our wings I’ll turn my attention to a request from that facsist Erdogan.
posted by salishsea at 7:21 PM on January 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by salishsea at 7:21 PM on January 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
"Can the Germans write it "Tuerkiye"?"
I believe they could but would never have to because a regular German keyboard includes the umlauted vowels as separate keys, as well as the ß.
Counterpoint: I'm Danish, and regularly have to type e.g. my actual name with oe and ae instead of ø and æ because not every keyboard I use is Danish layout, and not every computer I use is my own.
Typing the umlaut isn't hard: you're* just being lazy and ethnocentric.
It's not an umlaut, umlauts are German. It's a distinct letter, not a modified in the way that e.g. a French é is a a modified e. If it's so easy to type, just tell us how hard ü is instead of trying to refer to it in some way without having to.
posted by Dysk at 7:34 PM on January 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
I believe they could but would never have to because a regular German keyboard includes the umlauted vowels as separate keys, as well as the ß.
Counterpoint: I'm Danish, and regularly have to type e.g. my actual name with oe and ae instead of ø and æ because not every keyboard I use is Danish layout, and not every computer I use is my own.
Typing the umlaut isn't hard: you're* just being lazy and ethnocentric.
It's not an umlaut, umlauts are German. It's a distinct letter, not a modified in the way that e.g. a French é is a a modified e. If it's so easy to type, just tell us how hard ü is instead of trying to refer to it in some way without having to.
posted by Dysk at 7:34 PM on January 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
One of the outcomes of asking people to change words in their language, is that they may just ignore you. Another is that they might agree the word should change, but have different ideas about what it should change to. It's their language, after all, so they get to make up the words.
It would be hilariously funny, for instance, if Erdogan's move backfired and English speakers instead decided to adopt the spelling of the Kurmanji endonym, Tirkiye. It fits much more easily into English, you know. It has none of those pesky umlauts.
posted by automatronic at 7:37 PM on January 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
It would be hilariously funny, for instance, if Erdogan's move backfired and English speakers instead decided to adopt the spelling of the Kurmanji endonym, Tirkiye. It fits much more easily into English, you know. It has none of those pesky umlauts.
posted by automatronic at 7:37 PM on January 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
It's not an umlaut, umlauts are German. It's a distinct letter, not a modified in the way that e.g. a French é is a a modified e. If it's so easy to type, just tell us how hard ü is instead of trying to refer to it in some way without having to.
Absolutely, such a great point! I was just referring to the clever title of this lovely thread that is inspiring such a fun conversation.
posted by smorgasbord at 7:47 PM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
Absolutely, such a great point! I was just referring to the clever title of this lovely thread that is inspiring such a fun conversation.
posted by smorgasbord at 7:47 PM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
When the Turks officially adopt 'Danmark' or even 'Denmark' over 'Danimarka' I'll be willing to talk about how the details of how 'Turkey' is transliterated in English. They don't even use characters that aren't part of the standard Turkish alphabet!
It's a detail of spelling. Turkish itself arbitrarily changes spellings when it suits Turkish speakers, so it's not exactly surprising or unfair when speakers of other languages do the same as well. Sometimes names have colonial baggage and there are good reasons to change them. That isn't happening here - it's Erdogan with a detail about spelling.
posted by Dysk at 7:55 PM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
It's a detail of spelling. Turkish itself arbitrarily changes spellings when it suits Turkish speakers, so it's not exactly surprising or unfair when speakers of other languages do the same as well. Sometimes names have colonial baggage and there are good reasons to change them. That isn't happening here - it's Erdogan with a detail about spelling.
posted by Dysk at 7:55 PM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
It would be hilariously funny, for instance, if Erdogan's move backfired and English speakers instead
Not to belabor the point, but 12 million English speakers live in [the country whose capital is Ankara]. That's three times New Zealand's English-speaking population and 40% of Canada's.
Native English speakers are a shrinking minority of English speakers. Which is why the whole exonym/endonym thing is a little out of place in this particular context.
posted by Not A Thing at 8:13 PM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
Not to belabor the point, but 12 million English speakers live in [the country whose capital is Ankara]. That's three times New Zealand's English-speaking population and 40% of Canada's.
Native English speakers are a shrinking minority of English speakers. Which is why the whole exonym/endonym thing is a little out of place in this particular context.
posted by Not A Thing at 8:13 PM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
Give us back Constantinople and you can have all the umlauts you want.
posted by lock robster at 10:49 PM on January 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by lock robster at 10:49 PM on January 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
I do believe Turks still refer to Poland as Lechistan (from the founding myth of Lech, Czech and Rus). Which is taught in Polish schools because the Ottoman Sultanate never acknowledged the partitions of Poland, so for over a century in each diplomatic reception there was the announcement that "the ambassador from Lechistan has not arrived". They're now using Türkiye* in all tourist campaigns, which is a nice way to introduce their preferred endonym, but no media have changed the spelling/pronunciation from Turcja, probably because declination of Türkiye according to Polish grammar would be a nightmare.
I mean, Germans have put up with a millennium of us calling them "the ones who can't talk right" (Niemcy)...
* Secret to typing it on a non-umlaut keyboard in Windows: install English International keyboard and alt+shift to switch keyboards, then type "u. Even easier on Android where you just hold down the u key and pick from all common special options. I mean, it's not Việt, which I admit required googling and copy-paste, it's a common diacritic that appears in so many languages.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 1:53 AM on January 28, 2023 [5 favorites]
I mean, Germans have put up with a millennium of us calling them "the ones who can't talk right" (Niemcy)...
* Secret to typing it on a non-umlaut keyboard in Windows: install English International keyboard and alt+shift to switch keyboards, then type "u. Even easier on Android where you just hold down the u key and pick from all common special options. I mean, it's not Việt, which I admit required googling and copy-paste, it's a common diacritic that appears in so many languages.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 1:53 AM on January 28, 2023 [5 favorites]
If we're to pronounce it a certain way, sure. Let's try that. But I am NOT spending a whole lot of time trying to type out an umlaut. Sorry, Turks, ain't got time for that.
posted by zardoz at 3:28 AM on January 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by zardoz at 3:28 AM on January 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
MetaFilter: used to being misunderstood and insulted rather than engaged with respectfully
(h/t to smorgasbord for this and for choosing a name which is splendidly topical for this particular thread; IYKYK)
posted by jklaiho at 4:12 AM on January 28, 2023 [7 favorites]
(h/t to smorgasbord for this and for choosing a name which is splendidly topical for this particular thread; IYKYK)
posted by jklaiho at 4:12 AM on January 28, 2023 [7 favorites]
Having an exonym is sort of a compliment, because it means that place gets talked about enough to have its own name in the other language. Firenze is important enough to us to get called ‘Florence’, but nobody cares enough about Arezzo for it to get an English name.
Equally London gets to be ‘Londres’ and Cornwall is ‘Cornouailles’ but there’s no French name for Scunthorpe.
posted by Phanx at 4:32 AM on January 28, 2023 [10 favorites]
Equally London gets to be ‘Londres’ and Cornwall is ‘Cornouailles’ but there’s no French name for Scunthorpe.
posted by Phanx at 4:32 AM on January 28, 2023 [10 favorites]
St Couen-Tropez?
posted by Phanx at 5:28 AM on January 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Phanx at 5:28 AM on January 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
People will type it without the umlaut, which will be fine. Reaction against this is just the usual Anglophone chauvinism with a smattering of nostalgia for the beforetimes in the colonial longago. The 'exonym' isn't an entirely different word here, or a variant of a common name in a different language, it's an approximation of a pronunciation that was 'too hard.'
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:40 AM on January 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:40 AM on January 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
jklaiho:
Surely, you mean smörgåsbord?posted by bouvin at 6:06 AM on January 28, 2023 [4 favorites]
I think it's maybe impossible to have a discussion about this if we can't separate questions of exonyms, respecting different cultures, etc. from the question of "who, exactly, is making this specific request, and is he motivated by political jingoism, and is his request itself performing exactly the kind of cultural erasure that people calling bullshit on his request are being accused of?"
I am a total ignoramus where this specific culture is concerned, and am fascinated by the people jumping in to explain bits and pieces of its history and present makeup. But I am familiar with Ergodan, because he was one of the nationalist dictators who Trump was compared to, back when Trump first ran. And Trump also railed against people speaking languages that weren't "his," other nations refusing to show America the proper respect—and he was rightly accused of using "respect" as a fig leaf for "rousing a violent and anti-democratic populist party." We really can't talk about "what Ergodan says other nations should do" without Ergodan being in the mix.
One lesson that I've taken away from the last decade or so is that the sorts of people who are prone to feeling guilt about their colonialist imperialist leanings in ways that make them want to loudly show how accepting they are of other cultures are also prone to being ignorant enough of cultural context that they wind up getting suckered into essentially becoming patsies for a con. I am sympathetic to that tendency, not least because I am that guilty-conscience white American and I have at times overcorrected to the point of endorsing shitty things in the name of progress. But it's a widespread enough phenomenon that a cottage industry exists to take advantage of it, including a number of propaganda outlets that specifically target left-leaning people with rhetoric aimed at persuading them to have sympathy for fascist-leaning (or outright fascist) causes.
In this case, given that people with actual connections to this country are saying "I don't personally think this is the issue that Ergodan claims it is," and given that Ergodan was widely known to be a politician in the Trump mold way before Trump himself existed, I am enormously skeptical of any "Ergodan is right" argument that doesn't grapple with the fact that, as numerous people have pointed out in this thread, Ergodan is making this announcement during an election cycle, Ergodan has a habit of rallying nationalist and xenophobic forces by manufacturing us-vs-them political "crises," and Ergodan is generally—not to put too fine a point on it—a piece of shit. Sure, inertia means people resist change whether or not it's good, and yes, something something privilege something imperialism something something something. I find a lot of this conversation fascinating, I enjoy what I'm learning in it, and I'd be very interested in hearing whether Ergodan's purported feelings here truly are broadly-held or whether it's absolutely bullshit. But at the very least, I do not think that it's sensible to leap straight to "rah rah he's right!" and insist that his critics are conspicuous bigots, when Ergodan is a conspicuous bad actor who sucks shit and hasn't acted in good faith for decades.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 6:09 AM on January 28, 2023 [15 favorites]
I am a total ignoramus where this specific culture is concerned, and am fascinated by the people jumping in to explain bits and pieces of its history and present makeup. But I am familiar with Ergodan, because he was one of the nationalist dictators who Trump was compared to, back when Trump first ran. And Trump also railed against people speaking languages that weren't "his," other nations refusing to show America the proper respect—and he was rightly accused of using "respect" as a fig leaf for "rousing a violent and anti-democratic populist party." We really can't talk about "what Ergodan says other nations should do" without Ergodan being in the mix.
One lesson that I've taken away from the last decade or so is that the sorts of people who are prone to feeling guilt about their colonialist imperialist leanings in ways that make them want to loudly show how accepting they are of other cultures are also prone to being ignorant enough of cultural context that they wind up getting suckered into essentially becoming patsies for a con. I am sympathetic to that tendency, not least because I am that guilty-conscience white American and I have at times overcorrected to the point of endorsing shitty things in the name of progress. But it's a widespread enough phenomenon that a cottage industry exists to take advantage of it, including a number of propaganda outlets that specifically target left-leaning people with rhetoric aimed at persuading them to have sympathy for fascist-leaning (or outright fascist) causes.
In this case, given that people with actual connections to this country are saying "I don't personally think this is the issue that Ergodan claims it is," and given that Ergodan was widely known to be a politician in the Trump mold way before Trump himself existed, I am enormously skeptical of any "Ergodan is right" argument that doesn't grapple with the fact that, as numerous people have pointed out in this thread, Ergodan is making this announcement during an election cycle, Ergodan has a habit of rallying nationalist and xenophobic forces by manufacturing us-vs-them political "crises," and Ergodan is generally—not to put too fine a point on it—a piece of shit. Sure, inertia means people resist change whether or not it's good, and yes, something something privilege something imperialism something something something. I find a lot of this conversation fascinating, I enjoy what I'm learning in it, and I'd be very interested in hearing whether Ergodan's purported feelings here truly are broadly-held or whether it's absolutely bullshit. But at the very least, I do not think that it's sensible to leap straight to "rah rah he's right!" and insist that his critics are conspicuous bigots, when Ergodan is a conspicuous bad actor who sucks shit and hasn't acted in good faith for decades.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 6:09 AM on January 28, 2023 [15 favorites]
And to the extent it's an Erdogan election stunt, it can be acknowledged and back-burnered to address when less useful to him; which is maybe what's going on.
The variant Kurdish orthography definitely complicates it diplomatically; but surely the Kurds don't pronounce it the same way we refer to Thanksgiving dinner. It's reasonable to want to distinguish the name of the place and the people from the avian malapropism, which doesn't happen in the other languages mentioned (afaik).
The German and French are also a lot closer to 'Turkiye' than 'Turkey.' French has that '-i-eh' sound as a word-ending, I'm not sure about German.
I do not think that it's sensible to leap straight to "rah rah he's right!" and insist that his critics are conspicuous bigots
What about when the criticism is being made by people completely aside from that based on the existence of other Anglophone approximations of place names around the world coined during the colonial era being normal?
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:12 AM on January 28, 2023
The variant Kurdish orthography definitely complicates it diplomatically; but surely the Kurds don't pronounce it the same way we refer to Thanksgiving dinner. It's reasonable to want to distinguish the name of the place and the people from the avian malapropism, which doesn't happen in the other languages mentioned (afaik).
The German and French are also a lot closer to 'Turkiye' than 'Turkey.' French has that '-i-eh' sound as a word-ending, I'm not sure about German.
I do not think that it's sensible to leap straight to "rah rah he's right!" and insist that his critics are conspicuous bigots
What about when the criticism is being made by people completely aside from that based on the existence of other Anglophone approximations of place names around the world coined during the colonial era being normal?
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:12 AM on January 28, 2023
I note that the knee jerk objection was "that's weird and unfamiliar" and "writing ü is hard" not "this is a political stunt, so I'm not going to help Erdogan out" (whose name can't be typed readily on the English Android keyboard, unlike ü).
Also, because people are claiming exonyms never change at a country's behest, or something (and also decided Czechia doesn't count), Belarus got the German government to start calling them Belarus and not Weißrussland. (I say the German government because I don't think it bled into the language, but it will slowly.)
posted by hoyland at 6:51 AM on January 28, 2023 [4 favorites]
Also, because people are claiming exonyms never change at a country's behest, or something (and also decided Czechia doesn't count), Belarus got the German government to start calling them Belarus and not Weißrussland. (I say the German government because I don't think it bled into the language, but it will slowly.)
posted by hoyland at 6:51 AM on January 28, 2023 [4 favorites]
the usual Anglophone chauvinism with a smattering of nostalgia for the beforetimes in the colonial long ago. The 'exonym' isn't an entirely different word here, or a variant of a common name in a different language, it's an approximation of a pronunciation that was 'too hard.'
Not really; this isn't a case of hearing "Turkiye" and butchering the pronunciation. It evolved in English as from the knowledge that the Turks lived there, and we used it for the "land of the Turks," more than half-a-millennia before that was the name of the state. (I'm sure you can complain about the pronunciation of the "u" being off in the stem Turk, but it's literally not a sound we have in English.)
As I said before, I'm neutral on the change, but the idea that using exonyms is a special feature of the Anglophone world seems very strange to me. The smattering of other languages I'm familiar with is full of different words for different countries, and at least when I was in Europe in the '90s it was routine to see city names on train routes change as borders were crossed.
posted by mark k at 7:29 AM on January 28, 2023 [9 favorites]
Not really; this isn't a case of hearing "Turkiye" and butchering the pronunciation. It evolved in English as from the knowledge that the Turks lived there, and we used it for the "land of the Turks," more than half-a-millennia before that was the name of the state. (I'm sure you can complain about the pronunciation of the "u" being off in the stem Turk, but it's literally not a sound we have in English.)
As I said before, I'm neutral on the change, but the idea that using exonyms is a special feature of the Anglophone world seems very strange to me. The smattering of other languages I'm familiar with is full of different words for different countries, and at least when I was in Europe in the '90s it was routine to see city names on train routes change as borders were crossed.
posted by mark k at 7:29 AM on January 28, 2023 [9 favorites]
Interesting. I get that the modern state isn't that old, but had thought that the English version was approximating some existing usage referring to the region. That is different than most of the cases I had in mind.
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:51 AM on January 28, 2023
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:51 AM on January 28, 2023
And it's usually also a function/consequence on how that country entered the local society's awareness: Cambodia is Kemboja to us which is the localized pronunciation of Kamboja (Sanskrit) and survives in the French Cambodge, and Morocco is Maghribi to us because al-Maghreb is how we knew it. Even the US is Amerika Syarikat (an old definition of union, now it just means a business company, heh).
(ETA: sorry, riffing off on mark k's point)
posted by cendawanita at 7:52 AM on January 28, 2023 [5 favorites]
(ETA: sorry, riffing off on mark k's point)
posted by cendawanita at 7:52 AM on January 28, 2023 [5 favorites]
Calling accented characters "special" is a very US english-centered view of the world.
We are talking about what a country's name should be *in US English*, so yes it will be centered on that. I'm agnostic about whether it should be Turkey or Turkiye, but I do almost all of my long-form typing on a laptop, so unless I'm writing something focused enough on the place that it is worth it to keep a page with the ISO character list up to copy and paste, it's going to be a u either way.
posted by tavella at 9:20 AM on January 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
We are talking about what a country's name should be *in US English*, so yes it will be centered on that. I'm agnostic about whether it should be Turkey or Turkiye, but I do almost all of my long-form typing on a laptop, so unless I'm writing something focused enough on the place that it is worth it to keep a page with the ISO character list up to copy and paste, it's going to be a u either way.
posted by tavella at 9:20 AM on January 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
FWIW, in many Windows programs you can hold down the ALT key and type 0252 on the numeric keypad in order to get ü. (Of course, both Windows and the numeric keypad seem to be going the way of the dodo -- the latter much more quickly than the former.)
posted by Slothrup at 9:50 AM on January 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Slothrup at 9:50 AM on January 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
It does seem that Turkia would be a better solution. If this were about problem solving.
posted by Not A Thing at 10:07 AM on January 28, 2023
posted by Not A Thing at 10:07 AM on January 28, 2023
Interesting. More interesting still is that I first heard about this from my fifth grader. Had no idea this was an Erdogan thing. iOS makes it super easy to type Türkiye (it even auto corrected me!) but no idea where to find that Turkish g without going to an alternate keyboard.
posted by eirias at 11:28 AM on January 28, 2023
posted by eirias at 11:28 AM on January 28, 2023
One lesson that I've taken away from the last decade or so is that the sorts of people who are prone to feeling guilt about their colonialist imperialist leanings in ways that make them want to loudly show how accepting they are of other cultures are also prone to being ignorant enough of cultural context that they wind up getting suckered into essentially becoming patsies for a con.
Good way of describing some of this thread.
posted by doctornemo at 12:08 PM on January 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
Good way of describing some of this thread.
posted by doctornemo at 12:08 PM on January 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
actually, the turks were never colonized - can we try to remember that?
posted by pyramid termite at 12:27 PM on January 28, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by pyramid termite at 12:27 PM on January 28, 2023 [7 favorites]
It's reasonable to want to distinguish the name of the place and the people from the avian malapropism, which doesn't happen in the other languages mentioned (afaik).
The Portuguese name for the country "Peru" is Peru, and the name for the bird that we call a 'turkey' is peru.
The Turkish word for "India" is Hindistan, and the name for the bird that we call a 'turkey' is hindi.
For that matter, the Turkish word for "Egypt" is Misir, and the name for the food that we call 'corn' is misir.
And for that matter, the (Ottoman) Turkish word for Western Europeans (some of whom include a group we refer to as "the Franks") is Frenk, and the name for the disease we call 'syphilis' is frengi (etymologically, 'of the Franks'), which was not a source of pleasure for my friend Frank when he was in Istanbul.
I suggest everyone turn to the astonishingly not-made-up thoughts of Benjamin Franklin on the bird: "the turkey is 'a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America...He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage," and just let the matter rest and be glad they don't share their name with a venereal disease.
posted by Theiform at 12:32 PM on January 28, 2023 [8 favorites]
The Portuguese name for the country "Peru" is Peru, and the name for the bird that we call a 'turkey' is peru.
The Turkish word for "India" is Hindistan, and the name for the bird that we call a 'turkey' is hindi.
For that matter, the Turkish word for "Egypt" is Misir, and the name for the food that we call 'corn' is misir.
And for that matter, the (Ottoman) Turkish word for Western Europeans (some of whom include a group we refer to as "the Franks") is Frenk, and the name for the disease we call 'syphilis' is frengi (etymologically, 'of the Franks'), which was not a source of pleasure for my friend Frank when he was in Istanbul.
I suggest everyone turn to the astonishingly not-made-up thoughts of Benjamin Franklin on the bird: "the turkey is 'a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America...He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage," and just let the matter rest and be glad they don't share their name with a venereal disease.
posted by Theiform at 12:32 PM on January 28, 2023 [8 favorites]
It's fascinating to me that some of us here are being accused of being fascist sympathizers not out of malicious intent but rather presumed liberal ignorance and white guilt. I don't know what's worse, being awful on purpose or on accident, although it's all quite laughable. It's extra interesting when so many of the people pointing fingers in this patronizing way are older white men from the US and/or northern Europe. Duly noted, as Henry Rollins, one of my favorite white older men from the US, so often says! We try so hard at Metafilter to be inclusive and representative but we have a long ways to go, and this thread is certainly proof. Poco a poco, paso a paso, we'll get there!
Part of me is tempted to share more anecdotes but nah, I'll not fuel the fire. I'm coming off of a high of an educational workshop where secondary educators shared strategies and perspectives for engaging students and fostering interculturality on a deeper level. It was amazing!! One of my favorite moments was a cool Vietnamese teacher explaining Vietnamese characters and how to better pronounce names and words in English, like the common surname Nguyen (or should I dare to write Nguyễn!) I'm glad to try even if I may never get it right: I think of students finding the courage to ask for their first names to be spelled in the way they want, their first names to be pronounced correctly, and beyond. I know I was one of them and frankly it's still a struggle as an adult to have people say my real name correctly. As I wrote before, being an educator is a huge part of my life; part of why I read Metafilter is to learn. Fortunately, my students and families in these past two decades, regardless of nationality or political leanings, have been way more openminded and ready for discussion than MeFites at times! This conversation also showed me some people are simply not cut out for education as it takes a certain openness but everyone has their strengths and place, which is here too!
That said, this thread started as a opportunity to discuss international spelling and its political implications, then quickly became a chance to pile on anyone who was trying to extend the conversation in a related tangent. It's like hunting for communists during the Red Scare but whatever this 2023 anti-woke woke version is?! Still, I do really appreciate hearing the perspectives of people who agree or disagree because I have learned a lot. After all, we are all nerds discussing/arguing with strangers on the weekend rather than partying like the cool kids.
Finally, a book I found super helpful in understanding all of this is What the West is Getting Wrong about the Middle East: Why Islam is Not the Problem by Ömer Taspinar. As you can see from the table of contents, it includes an informative chapter on the author's home country of Turkey and Erdogan's rise to power and strategies to remain there. (Again, I agree with y'all that he's awful.) Taspinar is a professor at the National War College and senior fellow at the Brookings Institute. It's a dense book, chock full of insights, but we're all smart here so it should be a good read.
posted by smorgasbord at 12:40 PM on January 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
Part of me is tempted to share more anecdotes but nah, I'll not fuel the fire. I'm coming off of a high of an educational workshop where secondary educators shared strategies and perspectives for engaging students and fostering interculturality on a deeper level. It was amazing!! One of my favorite moments was a cool Vietnamese teacher explaining Vietnamese characters and how to better pronounce names and words in English, like the common surname Nguyen (or should I dare to write Nguyễn!) I'm glad to try even if I may never get it right: I think of students finding the courage to ask for their first names to be spelled in the way they want, their first names to be pronounced correctly, and beyond. I know I was one of them and frankly it's still a struggle as an adult to have people say my real name correctly. As I wrote before, being an educator is a huge part of my life; part of why I read Metafilter is to learn. Fortunately, my students and families in these past two decades, regardless of nationality or political leanings, have been way more openminded and ready for discussion than MeFites at times! This conversation also showed me some people are simply not cut out for education as it takes a certain openness but everyone has their strengths and place, which is here too!
That said, this thread started as a opportunity to discuss international spelling and its political implications, then quickly became a chance to pile on anyone who was trying to extend the conversation in a related tangent. It's like hunting for communists during the Red Scare but whatever this 2023 anti-woke woke version is?! Still, I do really appreciate hearing the perspectives of people who agree or disagree because I have learned a lot. After all, we are all nerds discussing/arguing with strangers on the weekend rather than partying like the cool kids.
Finally, a book I found super helpful in understanding all of this is What the West is Getting Wrong about the Middle East: Why Islam is Not the Problem by Ömer Taspinar. As you can see from the table of contents, it includes an informative chapter on the author's home country of Turkey and Erdogan's rise to power and strategies to remain there. (Again, I agree with y'all that he's awful.) Taspinar is a professor at the National War College and senior fellow at the Brookings Institute. It's a dense book, chock full of insights, but we're all smart here so it should be a good read.
posted by smorgasbord at 12:40 PM on January 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
If it helps, I'm neither a man nor white and is a Muslim. I'm sure that's extra interesting too. I'm pretty sure cihan as a native Turkish person from Istanbul is also, extra interestingly, none of those things. Do we not count? Meatbomb, who posted the FPP in the first place, is I believe also a Muslim, certainly related by marriage to a Central Asian, so a familiarity with imperial Ottomans isn't just theoretical, the kind picked up in a workshop.
posted by cendawanita at 1:03 PM on January 28, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by cendawanita at 1:03 PM on January 28, 2023 [9 favorites]
Point out to me, who from areas of the 'global ummah' or lived in them (so thanks for that book rec, but i have indeed finished reading the "Qur'an"), in the comments, who have had anything good to say about this policy dictat, even if we all apparently agree Erdogan is a POS. It is true we are the minority in the headcount but our stated opinions aren't as varied.
posted by cendawanita at 1:10 PM on January 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by cendawanita at 1:10 PM on January 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
Just to clarify: Ömer Taspinar's book posits that we look at conflicts in the Middle East not through the lens of a religious text but rather a geopolitical/geo-sociological approach.
cendawanita, I value hearing your perspectives so I try to read all your posts and comments on MetaFilter!! Therefore, I am familiar with your background or at least what you share on the site. You and so many others make wonderful points here that are focused on the topic and none of which are attacking the character or intelligence of the person posting it. Others have chosen to go that route and they seem to be from the group I had mentioned above. Frankly, it makes me feel unwelcome, which I guess I am because few people stepped up to call them out. We can report posts that make us uncomfortable but I am trying to keep engaging to find a greater understanding.
I wish we could hear even more perspectives from people who are Turkish and/or Kurdish and/or Armenian, etc. I have chosen not to post what my various friends from the diaspora/s have said as it feels like the whole "my dog is gay so I get special exceptions." However, because the Turkish government can be and so often is so oppressive and brutal, my experience has shown that very few of those friends with a Turkish passport and/or family back home -- same for Iranian and Russian friends -- feel safe truly expressing their opinions publicly, even in an online forum. So basically on Metafilter in conversations like this we get a lot of people with no personal connection to situations having good intentions but trying to out virtue signal each other.
posted by smorgasbord at 1:33 PM on January 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
cendawanita, I value hearing your perspectives so I try to read all your posts and comments on MetaFilter!! Therefore, I am familiar with your background or at least what you share on the site. You and so many others make wonderful points here that are focused on the topic and none of which are attacking the character or intelligence of the person posting it. Others have chosen to go that route and they seem to be from the group I had mentioned above. Frankly, it makes me feel unwelcome, which I guess I am because few people stepped up to call them out. We can report posts that make us uncomfortable but I am trying to keep engaging to find a greater understanding.
I wish we could hear even more perspectives from people who are Turkish and/or Kurdish and/or Armenian, etc. I have chosen not to post what my various friends from the diaspora/s have said as it feels like the whole "my dog is gay so I get special exceptions." However, because the Turkish government can be and so often is so oppressive and brutal, my experience has shown that very few of those friends with a Turkish passport and/or family back home -- same for Iranian and Russian friends -- feel safe truly expressing their opinions publicly, even in an online forum. So basically on Metafilter in conversations like this we get a lot of people with no personal connection to situations having good intentions but trying to out virtue signal each other.
posted by smorgasbord at 1:33 PM on January 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
Ok but on this point:
Just to clarify: Ömer Taspinar's book posits that we look at conflicts in the Middle East not through the lens of a religious text but rather a geopolitical/geo-sociological approach.
I might have overlooked such comments, but the impression I'm getting, even from more American parochial-seeming ones, is that no one is making any argument about Muslims ie the religious text. There's a unanimous tenor that it's geopolitical.
Now, certainly there are those comments who kneejerked about the ü, and even mine, and there are those who talked about it being too difficult (facetiously, i guess but maybe not) but more significantly to me, are those who articulated the part about it being too difficult is due to the colonial approach being taken by E's govt in going with Turkish spelling as though all Latin-scripted languages have this character or the umlaut that's closest to it (I'm even using my Turkish keyboard so the Unicode for that character is rendered correctly if that's a potential issue). İf you're serious about the effect of intercultural understanding then why isn't that point the takehome one?
(That is to say, perhaps people moved past the urge to treat this request seriously by sharing interesting spelling structures because they can see it's a nationalist bait-and-switch)
And to your last paragraph, do you think people like me comment from an area of security? Yes it's true many feel compelled to keep quiet which makes those who do, such as in this very thread, even more weighted by this. So one Turkish voice isn't enough, you want more, when you just said most feel unsafe to say anything?
(Ok lol, I just realized one of the I's got autocorrected to the Turkish character. I'm keeping it.)
posted by cendawanita at 1:49 PM on January 28, 2023 [4 favorites]
Just to clarify: Ömer Taspinar's book posits that we look at conflicts in the Middle East not through the lens of a religious text but rather a geopolitical/geo-sociological approach.
I might have overlooked such comments, but the impression I'm getting, even from more American parochial-seeming ones, is that no one is making any argument about Muslims ie the religious text. There's a unanimous tenor that it's geopolitical.
Now, certainly there are those comments who kneejerked about the ü, and even mine, and there are those who talked about it being too difficult (facetiously, i guess but maybe not) but more significantly to me, are those who articulated the part about it being too difficult is due to the colonial approach being taken by E's govt in going with Turkish spelling as though all Latin-scripted languages have this character or the umlaut that's closest to it (I'm even using my Turkish keyboard so the Unicode for that character is rendered correctly if that's a potential issue). İf you're serious about the effect of intercultural understanding then why isn't that point the takehome one?
(That is to say, perhaps people moved past the urge to treat this request seriously by sharing interesting spelling structures because they can see it's a nationalist bait-and-switch)
And to your last paragraph, do you think people like me comment from an area of security? Yes it's true many feel compelled to keep quiet which makes those who do, such as in this very thread, even more weighted by this. So one Turkish voice isn't enough, you want more, when you just said most feel unsafe to say anything?
(Ok lol, I just realized one of the I's got autocorrected to the Turkish character. I'm keeping it.)
posted by cendawanita at 1:49 PM on January 28, 2023 [4 favorites]
[cendawanita, I have sent you a MeMail as I'm happy to explain but would prefer to do so privately as I'm stepping away from this public discussion. Again, I'd be open to talk to you and anyone else about any or all of this behind the scenes. I'm dealing with some mental health issues and, while so many points are important to discuss, the pile-on is really overwhelming for me rn. Thanks for understanding!]
posted by smorgasbord at 1:57 PM on January 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by smorgasbord at 1:57 PM on January 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
[ok, stay safe. I should go sleep as well.]
posted by cendawanita at 2:21 PM on January 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by cendawanita at 2:21 PM on January 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
Cambodia is Kemboja to us which is the localized pronunciation of Kamboja (Sanskrit) and survives in the French Cambodge
I also dimly recall a period when the New Straits Times started calling it Kampuchea
posted by infini at 2:50 PM on January 28, 2023
I also dimly recall a period when the New Straits Times started calling it Kampuchea
posted by infini at 2:50 PM on January 28, 2023
Y'all have no idea how far we've come, as peoples on the blue, from what I can make out from this thread alone.
*ponders 3000 comment grey threads of yore*
posted by infini at 2:52 PM on January 28, 2023 [5 favorites]
*ponders 3000 comment grey threads of yore*
posted by infini at 2:52 PM on January 28, 2023 [5 favorites]
And we come full circle. Why did Cambodia become Kampuchea? Because it was Year Zero and Pol Pot wished it so.
posted by Meatbomb at 3:25 PM on January 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Meatbomb at 3:25 PM on January 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
Cambodia is a truly great example of how historically complex and politically fraught country names can be.
(And there’s a number of minority groups in Cambodia with their own language traditions, traumas from the nation’s modern history, and opinions, as well…)
posted by faineg at 4:02 PM on January 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
(And there’s a number of minority groups in Cambodia with their own language traditions, traumas from the nation’s modern history, and opinions, as well…)
posted by faineg at 4:02 PM on January 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
"the turks were never colonized - can we try to remember that?"
Interesting point.
Some Turks were, depending on where they lived. The Turkish population was spread across Asia and the Middle East. Think about Turks in present-day Iraq, for example, or within the tsarist Russian empire.
Others were not - because they were in an Ottoman empire which did the colonizing of others.
Now, the Ottomans lost WWI, and the great colonial powers occupied its center, imposing a treaty which dismembered that empire, assigning parts of it to those powers and to others (Greece, for example). Then - it gets complicated - a Turkish nationalist movement takes off, there is more fighting, then there's a new treaty, which established a Turkish nation more or less along the lines we know now. So you could say some Turks, formerly within their own colonizing empire, were briefly colonized by others.
posted by doctornemo at 4:20 PM on January 28, 2023
Interesting point.
Some Turks were, depending on where they lived. The Turkish population was spread across Asia and the Middle East. Think about Turks in present-day Iraq, for example, or within the tsarist Russian empire.
Others were not - because they were in an Ottoman empire which did the colonizing of others.
Now, the Ottomans lost WWI, and the great colonial powers occupied its center, imposing a treaty which dismembered that empire, assigning parts of it to those powers and to others (Greece, for example). Then - it gets complicated - a Turkish nationalist movement takes off, there is more fighting, then there's a new treaty, which established a Turkish nation more or less along the lines we know now. So you could say some Turks, formerly within their own colonizing empire, were briefly colonized by others.
posted by doctornemo at 4:20 PM on January 28, 2023
the whole point being is that we shouldn't be regarding the turks as the victims of long western colonial exploitation
and it does get rather complicated as there was a lot of ethnic cleansing going on during ww1 and the downfall of what had been a truly diverse empire as it turned into a nationalist country - smyrna for example
on the one hand, it really isn't a big ask to say "this is the name of our country now, please use it" - on the other hand, this is happening in the context of a country that isn't honest about its own history and its creation of several genocides and its erasure of a valuable, if flawed, culture
under those circumstances, one has to question the sincerity of erdogan and wonder just how much his request is truly reflected by turkish popular opinion
posted by pyramid termite at 4:45 PM on January 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
and it does get rather complicated as there was a lot of ethnic cleansing going on during ww1 and the downfall of what had been a truly diverse empire as it turned into a nationalist country - smyrna for example
on the one hand, it really isn't a big ask to say "this is the name of our country now, please use it" - on the other hand, this is happening in the context of a country that isn't honest about its own history and its creation of several genocides and its erasure of a valuable, if flawed, culture
under those circumstances, one has to question the sincerity of erdogan and wonder just how much his request is truly reflected by turkish popular opinion
posted by pyramid termite at 4:45 PM on January 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
This is a long thread so perhaps I've missed it, but has anyone advocating acceding to Erdogan's request addressed the point that to do so we'd be explicitly privileging the Turkish name over the Kurdish name for the country? Because it feels pretty important that this *isn't* necessarily the preferred name and pronunciation for a sizable minority. Especially in the middle of an ongoing campaign to erase the Kurdish language from Turkey, as an example was only a few years ago that Turkey's Council of Higher Education banned students studying the Kurdish language and literature at Turkish universities from writing their dissertations in Kurdish.
Given that context it's really hard for me to understand the position that accepting the renaming is taking a stand *against* linguistic imperialism.
posted by Proofs and Refutations at 5:15 PM on January 28, 2023 [12 favorites]
Given that context it's really hard for me to understand the position that accepting the renaming is taking a stand *against* linguistic imperialism.
posted by Proofs and Refutations at 5:15 PM on January 28, 2023 [12 favorites]
I think there's no question that this is a nationalist power play with an eye on the upcoming elections. And obviously the name that we, as a handful of randos on the Internet, use for the country is not of much significance one way or the other.
But to the extent that we are talking about naming decisions with a bit more diplomatic weight (such as those of our respective countries), it's maybe worth considering that -- as with the current nonsense in Sweden -- the guy's ideal outcome is precisely to be able to claim that his country is being disrespected.
If everyone is just like "OK, your name is your name, noted", as most folks have done with Côte d'Ivoire and Eswatini and Belarus et al., it doesn't boost his narrative in the same way as if he can claim that the world is refusing to call [the country whose capital is Ankara] by its correct name.
Perhaps not of great moment in the end, but seemed like perhaps this might be one additional factor that might be worthy of consideration.
posted by Not A Thing at 9:19 PM on January 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
But to the extent that we are talking about naming decisions with a bit more diplomatic weight (such as those of our respective countries), it's maybe worth considering that -- as with the current nonsense in Sweden -- the guy's ideal outcome is precisely to be able to claim that his country is being disrespected.
If everyone is just like "OK, your name is your name, noted", as most folks have done with Côte d'Ivoire and Eswatini and Belarus et al., it doesn't boost his narrative in the same way as if he can claim that the world is refusing to call [the country whose capital is Ankara] by its correct name.
Perhaps not of great moment in the end, but seemed like perhaps this might be one additional factor that might be worthy of consideration.
posted by Not A Thing at 9:19 PM on January 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
The fascists will spin whatever happens in a self-serving way. You don't have to be nice to fascists to because if the risk that they might compassion you aren't nice to them otherwise. That is a losing game before you even begin.
posted by Dysk at 1:28 AM on January 29, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 1:28 AM on January 29, 2023 [3 favorites]
Compassion? Complain. Phone typing is wild sometimes.
posted by Dysk at 6:33 AM on January 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 6:33 AM on January 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
Why they changed it I can't say, Erdogan just likes it better that way.
posted by Reverend John at 11:52 AM on January 29, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by Reverend John at 11:52 AM on January 29, 2023 [6 favorites]
When a nation's government asks the anglophone community to change the exonym anglophones use, that's in the context of anglophone (now primarily US) global cultural imperialism and the related adoption of English as the world's trade language.
If your argument is that we should consider Erdogan's motivations and intentions — that is, the larger context — anglophone hegemony is certainly as relevant.
Also, if your perspective here is that all such requests by governments concerning exonyms should be evaluated on the basis on who you think is good or bad, then, yeah, such requests have always been accepted or denied according to, well, politics. Just don't pretend that the politics involved in your decision, if you're from an imperial power, aren't imperialist.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 9:27 PM on January 29, 2023 [3 favorites]
If your argument is that we should consider Erdogan's motivations and intentions — that is, the larger context — anglophone hegemony is certainly as relevant.
Also, if your perspective here is that all such requests by governments concerning exonyms should be evaluated on the basis on who you think is good or bad, then, yeah, such requests have always been accepted or denied according to, well, politics. Just don't pretend that the politics involved in your decision, if you're from an imperial power, aren't imperialist.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 9:27 PM on January 29, 2023 [3 favorites]
When a nation's government asks the anglophone community to change the exonym anglophones use, that's in the context of anglophone (now primarily US) global cultural imperialism and the related adoption of English as the world's trade language.
And more importantly, the language of international law.
That's why Ukrainians are so vocal about not calling Ukraine "the Ukraine" in English, but not nearly so vocal about French. French is not as significant for international law nowadays, and in French, the definite article is used to name lots of nations without implicitly denigrating their sovereignty. In English, it's used for island nations, and for 3 countries whose nationhood was implicitly diminished by the usage: Lebanon, Ukraine and the Netherlands. Naturally, Ukrainians want out of this set once and for all.
So context is important. And the context here is that this is a flex for Erdogan, and his base, and yet another kick at the Kurds. So meh.
posted by ocschwar at 10:57 AM on January 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
« Older “They weren’t actually looking at my ancestors as... | Bike Lanes good? Myths about them Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by Meatbomb at 8:49 AM on January 27, 2023 [29 favorites]