Posted on June 23,
2024
Turkey Jive
I before E and sometimes Y. Not.
by
Daniel
Clark
If you've been watching any of the Euro 2024 soccer tournament,
or even if you have just happened across it in your TV listings, you may have
noticed the participation of some team called "Turkiye," except that in this
spelling there is an umlaut over the letter "u." This, of course, is the country formerly
known as Turkey, which before that was named Turk Dogg Diddy. Well, not really, but if we had called it
that over here, it would have been nobody else's business.
In
2021, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave a speech before the United
Nations in which he asked that the rest of the world spell the name of his
country the same way its own people do.
"Turkiye [umlaut omitted] is the best representation and expression of
the Turkish people's culture, civilization and values," he said. Early last year, our State Department agreed
to adopt the Turk-approved spelling in diplomatic communications. Evidently, some of our sports media have
acquiesced, also.
The fact of the matter is that Erdogan is wrong. His preferred nomenclature is clearly not the
best representation and expression of anything, in any country that does not
find it linguistically convenient. His
expectation smacks of the kind of arrogance that liberals like to ascribe to
Americans, even though we would never dream of doing the same thing. Imagine if the United States told the rest of
the world to say and spell the name of our country the same way we do, even if
it is difficult for them to pronounce, and even if it contains characters that
are not part of their written languages.
The howls from the multiculturalists would be deafening. O, the xenophobia! O, the jingoism!
Yet Turkey is not alone in making such an unreasonable
demand. The government of the Ivory
Coast expects us all to call it "Cote d'Ivoire," with a caret over the "o" in
"Cote." As practically anybody can tell
right away, Ivory Coast is simply Cote d'Ivoire translated into non-sniveling,
so why not simply say the words in our own language? We don't take it as an insult when
Spanish-speaking people call our country Estados Unidos, nor do we insist that
they strain to form the words "United States" rather than simply translating them
into Spanish.
It is far from universal for the people of one country
to refer to another country by the same name it applies to itself. There is not a nation on earth that calls
itself Spain, Poland or Japan, for example.
Each of those countries is far friendlier to us than Turkey has been,
and yet we do not refer to them by their chosen titles. So why should Turkey rate exceptional
treatment? Because Erdogan said so. That's apparently all it takes. Had every other government made a similar declaration,
our media would now be referring to such places as Deutschland, Sverige and
Magyarorszag.
Not
only are we supposed to call other countries by whatever names they want, but
if this involves the adoption of letters and other characters we don't use,
then the English language must yield. We
have seen this rule applied not only in the Turkey example, but in the general
proliferation of non-English letters and punctuation across the liberal print
and broadcast media. Not only have
accent marks become commonplace, but so have tildes, umlauts, carets, the O
with a diagonal line through it, and the c with a dangling booger. If you resist this orthographic invasion on
the basis that our language makes no use of these symbols, then you are
the problem. You bigot.
Liberals like to mock people who believe in American
exceptionalism, but they believe in it too, in a manner of speaking. From their point of view, every country has a
right to secure its borders, except America.
Every country may exploit its natural resources, except America. Every country deserves to have its history
and traditions respected, except America.
Every country is entitled to a language that adheres to certain rules,
except America.
It isn't true, of course. Even our own government cannot dictate what
we say and write, let alone those of Turkey and the Ivory Coast. If we think the accommodations they expect
are unreasonable, then we just don't make them.
Modifying vowels with foreign markings and using linguistically
problematic triphthongs like "iye" are nonstarters. If the president of Turkey doesn't like it,
he can go get stuffed. And no, we shouldn't
care what he thinks of bad puns like that.
The Shinbone: The
Frontier of the Free Press
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