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Turkey name change to "Türkiye"

(Continuing from the 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquake article.)

Just a heads up... My main problem with the name change is the fact that it uses the "umlaut" symbol, which are the two dots above the "u". This symbol is not only in a foreign language to English, but in a foreign script as well. The English alphabet (a variation of the Latin script) does not use the umlaut symbol at all. The symbol is primarily found in German, Turkish, and a handful of other languages.

From a technical point of view, the "u" with an umlaut cannot normally be typed out on an English-language keyboard (i.e. on a desktop computer). In order to do so, you have to switch to a different language, such as either German or Turkish. Meanwhile, on a mobile device, you usually can easily type out the umlaut by holding down the letter symbol, so this is primarily an issue that affects desktops rather than mobile devices. Obviously, for handwriting, you can easily write out the umlaut. So, again, this issue primarily affects mechanical computer keyboards.

In addition, the words "Turkey" and "Turkiye" appear to be very similar, as opposed to, for example, "Persia" versus "Iran". With Persia and Iran, it is quite obvious that these are two entirely different names with very different etymological heritages. Indeed, looking at the pronunciation of "Iran", a lot of people can't pronounce it properly even in the present day... Americans tend to pronounce this name as "Eye-ranne", whereas the correct pronunciation is closer to "Ear-aahn".

My understanding is that "Turkiye" is supposed to be pronounced "Turk-eeh-yay" or "Turk-eeh-yeah". Nonetheless, I can imagine that most Westerners who see this new name will think that it is just a weird spelling of "Turkey" ("Turk-eeh"). If you delete the "e" from the end of the new name, then you just get "Turkiy", which looks almost identical to "Turkey" and should probably have a very similar pronunciation. So, from a pronunciation point of view, all you've really done is add an extra "e" to the end of the name, i.e. an extra syllable ("yay" or "yeah"), which most Westerners and English speakers will find to be completely unnecessary to add. The name "Turkey" is not only better known than "Turkiye" but indeed even shorter and easier to pronounce, as well as easier to type out on a mechanical keyboard. Combining all of these factors, the possibility that "Türkiye" will come into common usage is extremely low in the short term. In the long term, the form "Turkiye", without the umlaut, might become more widespread internationally, but the umlaut over the "u" will still be problematic for decades to come; literally no one will be willing to type out that extra symbol apart from maybe the Germans, who already have that symbol in their own language (i.e. script/alphabet). Jargo Nautilus (talk) 15:47, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

By the way, the letter "e" at the end of word in English can be either pronounced or silent, and it is often unpredictable whether this is the case for a particular word (you either know the pronunciation or you don't, and you can't immediately figure it out from the spelling alone).

In various word forms in English, the "e" at the end is naturally silent. For example, the word "example" is pronounced "eggs-amp-el" rather than "eggs-amp-el-eeh". For another example, the word "pronounce" is pronounced "pron-ounce", as opposed to "pron-ounce-eeh" (however, in this particular case, the letter "e" actually modified the pronunciation of the word; the word "pronounc" without the "e" would be pronounced "pron-ounk").

So, overall, this means that the word "Turkiye" can logically be pronounced as "Turkey" in the English language, and it isn't immediately obvious that the "e" at the end of the word is supposed to be sounded out at all. From a Westerner's point of view, particularly an English speaker's, it is easy to assume that the letter "e" at the end is supposed to be silent. So, considering this fact, a Westerner who reads the word "Turkiye" (or "Türkiye") could realistically assume that it is pronounced in exactly the same way as "Turkey". There is absolutely zero obvious indication that there is a difference in the pronunciation between these two alternative spellings of the same word.

Overall, this means that the distinction is primarily related to the spelling (i.e. handwriting or typing), and only moderately related to pronunciation. And, I've already pointed out that the spelling issue is problematic due to the umlaut.

Realistically, I predict that the spelling "Turkiye", without the umlaut, might eventually come into common usage several years from now. Meanwhile, the pronunciation probably will not change because there's no obvious difference between the two. Indeed, just as many Americans pronounce "Iran" incorrectly, I predict that a lot of Westerners will not realise that "Turkiye" has a slightly different pronunciation from "Turkey", and they will keep pronouncing it the incorrect way for decades to come. So, yeah, good luck fixing the way that people speak on a daily basis (indeed, the Brits have been trying to correct American accents and vice versa since time immemorial, and you can see where that has gone...). Jargo Nautilus (talk) 16:08, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Comment

To be honest, I don't think the "Turkey (country)" is commonly confused with the "Turkey (bird)". This was one of the reasons behind the official name change, but it's a very trivial reason in my opinion.

This is not like Georgia, where there is both a country called Georgia as well as a U.S. state called Georgia, both of which are equally prominent (from a Westerner's perspective). These two articles need to be differentiated as "Georgia (country)" and "Georgia (U.S. state)" for the sake of clarity. On the other hand, I don't believe that there really is any such requirement for Turkey to be disambiguated, since it's quite obvious that the country and the bird are two different things. I am making this comment since I can see that there have been several move discussions on Turkey's Wikipedia page to move "Turkey" to "Turkey (country)", which in my opinion is just completely unnecessary.

Overall, I can't really see any logical justification for changing Turkey's name in English to "Türkiye". Obviously, the spelling "Türkiye" already exists in the Turkish language, but it just doesn't make sense for the English language (although, "Turkiye" might be more acceptable). Meanwhile, it's a bit too much to ask for English speakers to change their pronunciation; changing the spelling (without the umlaut) is okay, but changing the pronunciation is not going to happen overnight or even in several decades. Meanwhile, the idea that Turkey needs to be differentiated between the country and the bird is a bit ridiculous, especially since the bird was obviously named after the country. I can think of another similar example; the bird "Guineafowl" was named after the region of "Guinea", but you don't see countries changing their names because of that association (there are four; Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, and Papua New Guinea). Jargo Nautilus (talk) 11:16, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

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