So, the UN has accepted a request from Ankara to change the spelling of the name of the country of which it is the capital, to that used in the written version of the Turkish language. Well, if they also expect English speakers to change their pronunciation as well, good luck with that! I should be very surprised if English-language publications fall into line with the new spelling – although modern computerised type setting allows anyone to use an ‘ü’ easily, this doesn’t mean that everyone knows how to access that character, and newspapers in general tend not to add diacritics to letters of other languages. The nearest most native English speakers will get to pronouncing the ‘new’ version is probably ‘tur-KEE-ya’; and the best spelling will mostly be ‘Turkiye’, with no umlaut.
Turkey vs Türkiye
June 3, 2022 | 2 Comments
February 22, 2023 at 4:27 am
As for “Türkiye (Turkey has officially asked that their country be called by it’s name in Turkish.)” (and “Eswatini” instead of “Swaziland”, and even “Romania” instead of “Rumania”!), not to put too fine a point on it; BUT:
SINCE WHEN DO FOREIGNERS – NON-NATIVE SPEAKERS OF ENGLISH! BUT RATHER, NATIVE-SPEAKERS OF OTHER, FOREIGN LANGUAGES – SUDDENLY GET TO DICTATE TO ENGLISH SPEAKERS WHAT THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE SHOULD CONSIST OF ? ! ?
Are the Turks themselves (and the Swazi speakers, and the Rumanians), when speaking their own respective native languages, also always consistently using all of the following terms (native designations) to refer to all of the following countries ?
Deutschland – Germany
Österreich – Austria
Magyarország – Hungary
Hrvatska – Croatia
Shqipëria – Albania
Hellas – Greece
Hayastán – Armenia
Sak’art’velo – Georgia
Lietuva – Lithuania
Suomi – Finland
Sverige – Sweden
Norge – Norway
Kalaallit Nunaat – Greenland
Dhivehi Raajje – The Maldives
Druk Yul – Bhutan
Bod – Tibet
Nippon – Japan
Zhōngguó – China
Daehan Min-guk – South Korea
Chosŏn Minjujuŭi Inmin Konghwaguk – North Korea
There are of course NUMEROUS other countries where neither the Turkish, nor the English designations of the country, nationality and language correspond to the native speakers’ own self-designations — it’s that way in all languages, all over the world!!!
When speaking and writing Turkish – how often do Turks ever switch to English to correctly pronounce and / or correctly spell out “the United States of America” or “England” or “Great Britain” or “the United Kingdom” ? – Instead of simply (virtually always!) calling these countries by their native Turkish designations in Turkish (when speaking Turkish!), namely, “Amerika Birleşik Devletleri” – “İngiltere” – “Büyük Britanya” and – “Birleşik Krallık” ? ! ?
Turks, and Swazi speakers are NOT suddenly entitled to dictate to English speakers what our English language should consist of!!! and insist that we suddenly adopt their self-designations, in their foreign language, into English, to replace our own native English terms!
And certainly so long as THEY do not FIRST THEMSELVES similarly and consistently adopt ALL other nations’ and languages’ self-designations into Turkish, (and Swazi), and replace all of their own Turkish (and Swazi) terms for other countries with those countries’ own self-designations, then they have NO right whatsoever to expect that any other language should do that with regard to “Turkey” (or “Swaziland”)!
August 26, 2023 at 3:08 pm
“Turkey” in English is an animal that Americans eat for Thanksgiving. It’s also slang for a stupid person. Sort of equivalent to the Russian word for German–nemets, which means “dumb” or “mute.” This is why they have asked (not demanded) to be referred to by their Turkish name. The other English names for countries you listed do not have negative connotations in English.