ISO name change for Türkiye(iso.org)
iso.org
ISO name change for Türkiye
https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:code:3166:TR
462 comments
Reminds me of Ivory Coast insisting that everyone call it Côte d'Ivoire, or even the "Republic of Côte d'Ivoire".
Sure, fine, whatever. Everyone deserves to be called by their preferred name. I find it weird though, because every country has a respectful exonym, so a direct translation doesn't seem wrong, and mixing languages seems even weirder.
I don't know why personal names don't typically get translated, but country names do, so this is not a hill worth dying on. It's just odd to me, especially since they are sticking with the colonial name instead of changing to some indigenous name.
Sure, fine, whatever. Everyone deserves to be called by their preferred name. I find it weird though, because every country has a respectful exonym, so a direct translation doesn't seem wrong, and mixing languages seems even weirder.
I don't know why personal names don't typically get translated, but country names do, so this is not a hill worth dying on. It's just odd to me, especially since they are sticking with the colonial name instead of changing to some indigenous name.
City names also get translated, but not regions / provinces. It’s all so arbitrary, probably mostly for historical reasons.
My own nationality (and perhaps yours, judging by your username?) comes to mind, Dutch, which doesn’t even vaguely resemble the way we refer to ourselves (“Nederlands”), but is close to a very old naming of a region in our country (“Diets”, ca. 1200 - 1550), how we call Germans (“Duits”), who call themselves different as well (“Deutsch”), where the word “German” probably stems from Germanic, which refers to a historical group of people in Central and Scandinavian Europe, comparable to “Latin”.
My own nationality (and perhaps yours, judging by your username?) comes to mind, Dutch, which doesn’t even vaguely resemble the way we refer to ourselves (“Nederlands”), but is close to a very old naming of a region in our country (“Diets”, ca. 1200 - 1550), how we call Germans (“Duits”), who call themselves different as well (“Deutsch”), where the word “German” probably stems from Germanic, which refers to a historical group of people in Central and Scandinavian Europe, comparable to “Latin”.
Just fyi., Dutch, Deutsch, Diets etc. are derived from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz (“of the people, popular”)[1]
[1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/deutsch
[1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/deutsch
Well.. Tuscany, Apulia, Lombardy, Sicily, Sardinia, Piedmont. Where did you find that regions don't get translated?
Mmm I had some French regions in mind, which typically don’t get translated in my own language at all (eg Côte d’Azure), but I just realized we do translate Pyrenées to “Pyreneeën” and there are probably many other examples as well.
We also translate Paris to Parijs, and Lille has an official translation to Rijsel but nobody uses that.
Sheesh if this were a codebase it would raise some serious questions about variable naming standards.
We also translate Paris to Parijs, and Lille has an official translation to Rijsel but nobody uses that.
Sheesh if this were a codebase it would raise some serious questions about variable naming standards.
Costa azzurra in Italian, apparently.
Pretty sure we had several posts on HM related to the weirdness of translations for names.
But there are cities like Denver. Luckier than others, in that respect ;)
Pretty sure we had several posts on HM related to the weirdness of translations for names.
But there are cities like Denver. Luckier than others, in that respect ;)
And Amsterdam, but TIL Rome is called Roma in Italian. :)
Finnish spells California as Kalifornia, translates e.g. North Dakota to Pohjois-Dakota, Hawaii is Havaiji, and so on. Regions do get translated too, but not as often.
It's a question of "how often do we need to mention this name"; only commonly mentioned get a translation or familiar-alphabet-munging.
Other countries needing to talk about provinces is more rare.
It's a question of "how often do we need to mention this name"; only commonly mentioned get a translation or familiar-alphabet-munging.
Other countries needing to talk about provinces is more rare.
Personal names will sometimes be translated - depending on when the person moved or decided to present as.
I know of Indian colleagues who go by an English-sounding name that is at least somewhat close to their actual name. Others have anglicized a spelling that is phonetically close.
The main difference is that you can ask them what they prefer as they’re right there.
It’s harder to ask an entire country.
I know of Indian colleagues who go by an English-sounding name that is at least somewhat close to their actual name. Others have anglicized a spelling that is phonetically close.
The main difference is that you can ask them what they prefer as they’re right there.
It’s harder to ask an entire country.
> Personal names will sometimes be translated - depending on when the person moved or decided to present as.
E.g. https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabel_II_del_Reino_Unido
E.g. https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabel_II_del_Reino_Unido
Or Cristoforo Colombo, aka Christopher Columbus
Historically it's more common than not. E.g. most names of European monarchs are translated.
Popes too. Pope John Paul II was Jan Pawel II in his native Poland, Giovanni Paolo in Italy, and so forth. Pope Francis is Francesco in Italian and Francisco in his native Spanish.
I was recently reading a Spanish newspaper that referred to Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Harry as Isabel and Enrique.
It was a little surprising since I’ve only ever seen the Spanish kings referred to as Juan Carlos and Felipe in English-language media, never by translations.
It was a little surprising since I’ve only ever seen the Spanish kings referred to as Juan Carlos and Felipe in English-language media, never by translations.
Anglicised spelling are probably often due to a change from a local alphabet to the one I'm using now.
My middle name is Olivier, by in English for a while I just translated it to Oliver.
I had a Chinese professor named “Da Ren”, but because his name was transliterated as “Daren”, he would just go as Daren for nonchinese, due to the collision.
Place names get translated when they become widely used in another language, this is because most "native" names often don't fit with the phonology of another language or the character set. It's particularly awkward for Turkey to insist on this name change because most languages don't actually have an "ü" letter so foreigners don't know how to pronounce it or type it on a computer.
Imagine if Bavarians insisted that everybody refer to their capital as "München".
Some people do translate their personal names. In china it's common for people to pick "english names" for interactions with foreigners in part because foreigners have huge problems pronouncing native names.
Imagine if Bavarians insisted that everybody refer to their capital as "München".
Some people do translate their personal names. In china it's common for people to pick "english names" for interactions with foreigners in part because foreigners have huge problems pronouncing native names.
Footnote- there's a very practical reason that personal names are not typically translated: address, i.e. speaking to people or calling to them.
If you're attempting to call to somebody using a translated name, such a person might not recognize and respond to the name, unless they've had considerable time to adjust to it.
On the other hand, one is typically not walking around shouting a country's name to get its attention.
This is not a hard and fast rule, and the translation of personal names has a complex and somewhat sordid history, but there's your short answer.
On the other hand, the variance from countries to cities, provinces, etc... well... I have nothing to offer on that mystery.
If you're attempting to call to somebody using a translated name, such a person might not recognize and respond to the name, unless they've had considerable time to adjust to it.
On the other hand, one is typically not walking around shouting a country's name to get its attention.
This is not a hard and fast rule, and the translation of personal names has a complex and somewhat sordid history, but there's your short answer.
On the other hand, the variance from countries to cities, provinces, etc... well... I have nothing to offer on that mystery.
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me omw to go demand that people call us The United States of America in spanish instead of estados unidos
like if people really gonna apply this standard they better do it consistently.
like if people really gonna apply this standard they better do it consistently.
You mean, in Español
> There is the precedent of Burma/Myanmar, "Country name remains Burma reflecting common British English usage".
Myanmar has the much bigger problem that it has no adjectival form, requiring even the most politically correct people to use "Burmese".
(Technically, that's not true - the official adjectival form, according to Myanmar, should be "Myanma". Good luck getting English speakers to understand that.)
Myanmar has the much bigger problem that it has no adjectival form, requiring even the most politically correct people to use "Burmese".
(Technically, that's not true - the official adjectival form, according to Myanmar, should be "Myanma". Good luck getting English speakers to understand that.)
> Technically, that's not true - the official adjectival form, according to Myanmar, should be "Myanma". Good luck getting English speakers to understand that.
How is that any harder than Afghanistan => Afghan.
How is that any harder than Afghanistan => Afghan.
I can think of two ways:
First, many English-speakers are familiar with -stan, which is used in seven different country names, plus some region names.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-stan
For most of these, you can get an ethnonym or demonym by removing -stan or -istan.
Second, the -ar in particular has a lot of trouble with non-rhotic English accents, where "Myanmar" might already be pronounced the same as "Myanma"!
First, many English-speakers are familiar with -stan, which is used in seven different country names, plus some region names.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-stan
For most of these, you can get an ethnonym or demonym by removing -stan or -istan.
Second, the -ar in particular has a lot of trouble with non-rhotic English accents, where "Myanmar" might already be pronounced the same as "Myanma"!
> Second, the -ar in particular has a lot of trouble with non-rhotic English accents, where "Myanmar" might already be pronounced the same as "Myanma"!
It's supposed to be. Both names, "Burma" and "Myanmar", are formed under the assumption that your English pronunciation is non-rhotic.
The same is true of the common Korean surname "Park", which does not contain any R-like sound. British spellings of foreign words really cause tremendous damage to the pronunciations used by rhotic speakers.
It's supposed to be. Both names, "Burma" and "Myanmar", are formed under the assumption that your English pronunciation is non-rhotic.
The same is true of the common Korean surname "Park", which does not contain any R-like sound. British spellings of foreign words really cause tremendous damage to the pronunciations used by rhotic speakers.
> British spellings of foreign words really cause tremendous damage to the pronunciations used by rhotic speakers.
It's such a strange thing to use an 'r' to modify the sound of the preceding vowel, and it's not even as if it's 100% consistent, because all English is a mess.
This expectation also leads to comical situations like the typical British pronunciation of "pasta". I guess the Italians should have spelled it parsta.
It's such a strange thing to use an 'r' to modify the sound of the preceding vowel, and it's not even as if it's 100% consistent, because all English is a mess.
This expectation also leads to comical situations like the typical British pronunciation of "pasta". I guess the Italians should have spelled it parsta.
For fun, get your English-accented acquaintances to pronounce "drawing".
Officially, the Queen's English says this is pronounced "drawing". But most Brits feel compelled to insert an R, "drawRing".
It is much like Americans saying "Mel and I", in object context, e.g. "She accused Mel and I", where "Mel and me" would have been right.
Officially, the Queen's English says this is pronounced "drawing". But most Brits feel compelled to insert an R, "drawRing".
It is much like Americans saying "Mel and I", in object context, e.g. "She accused Mel and I", where "Mel and me" would have been right.
> Officially, the Queen's English says this is pronounced "drawing". But most Brits feel compelled to insert an R, "drawRing".
Am British, literally no one I know personally puts an extra R in when pronouncing drawing. I have heard it said that way before but you certainly couldn’t say that “most” Brits do it.
Am British, literally no one I know personally puts an extra R in when pronouncing drawing. I have heard it said that way before but you certainly couldn’t say that “most” Brits do it.
Apparently, "most" of some poorly characterized strata of Brits.
I am amused that your sibling comment insists "drawRing" is correct British pronunciation.
I am amused that your sibling comment insists "drawRing" is correct British pronunciation.
> But most Brits feel compelled to insert an R, "drawRing".
They really are compelled to insert an R there. That is one of the phonological rules of their variety of English; it's how you avoid running one vowel into another vowel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linking_and_intrusive_R
Complaining about this is the equivalent of complaining about how Americans "feel" compelled to insert a vowel into the name Gbagbo, pronouncing it guh-bagbo. They don't just feel compelled; that is a genuine requirement of their language.
It is not at all similar to any variation on "Mel and I", which is an artificial rule that English speakers must be taught in school. The form people use naturally is "me and Mel".
They really are compelled to insert an R there. That is one of the phonological rules of their variety of English; it's how you avoid running one vowel into another vowel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linking_and_intrusive_R
Complaining about this is the equivalent of complaining about how Americans "feel" compelled to insert a vowel into the name Gbagbo, pronouncing it guh-bagbo. They don't just feel compelled; that is a genuine requirement of their language.
It is not at all similar to any variation on "Mel and I", which is an artificial rule that English speakers must be taught in school. The form people use naturally is "me and Mel".
> It is much like Americans saying "Mel and I", in object context, e.g. "She accused Mel and I", where "Mel and me" would have been right.
...
> It is not at all similar to any variation on "Mel and I", which is an artificial rule that English speakers must be taught in school. The form people use naturally is "me and Mel".
I think you're misunderstanding here. There's no situation where "she accused (Mel and) I" works. It's not taught in school. It happens because of people "hyper correcting" to match the inverted sentence. "(Mel and) I accused her" which they get corrected to use by the teacher when they say "(Mel and) me accused her".
> It is not at all similar to any variation on "Mel and I", which is an artificial rule that English speakers must be taught in school. The form people use naturally is "me and Mel".
I think you're misunderstanding here. There's no situation where "she accused (Mel and) I" works. It's not taught in school. It happens because of people "hyper correcting" to match the inverted sentence. "(Mel and) I accused her" which they get corrected to use by the teacher when they say "(Mel and) me accused her".
I'm not misunderstanding anything.
> There's no situation where "she accused (Mel and) I" works.
That is true.
> It happens because of people "hyper correcting" to match the inverted sentence. "(Mel and) I accused her" which they get corrected to use by the teacher
That is also true. But your own example is telling you that there is also no situation where "Mel and I accused her" works. Sentences in that form do not naturally occur in English; they must be taught in school. The correct form would be "Me and Mel accused her".
Intrusive R isn't like that. It is a feature of the language, not something dictated to speakers by a formal education system.
> There's no situation where "she accused (Mel and) I" works.
That is true.
> It happens because of people "hyper correcting" to match the inverted sentence. "(Mel and) I accused her" which they get corrected to use by the teacher
That is also true. But your own example is telling you that there is also no situation where "Mel and I accused her" works. Sentences in that form do not naturally occur in English; they must be taught in school. The correct form would be "Me and Mel accused her".
Intrusive R isn't like that. It is a feature of the language, not something dictated to speakers by a formal education system.
> The correct form would be "Me and Mel accused her".
No it isn't. You'd never say "Me accused her". If you don't like the inversion its perfectly fine to say "I and Mel accused her", but using "me" for the subject is never correct.
No it isn't. You'd never say "Me accused her". If you don't like the inversion its perfectly fine to say "I and Mel accused her", but using "me" for the subject is never correct.
> but using "me" for the subject [within a coordinated subject] is never correct.
Why do you believe this?
Why do you believe this?
100% wrong, again.
You like saying that, but so far you've shown no evidence that you have any idea what you're talking about.
Compare the article on intrusive R I linked before:
> This is now common enough in parts of England that, by 1997, the linguist John C. Wells considered it objectively part of Received Pronunciation, though he noted that it was still stigmatized as an incorrect pronunciation, as it is or was in some other standardized non-rhotic accents. Wells writes that at least in RP, "linking /r/ and intrusive /r/ are distinct only historically and orthographically".[17]
Where footnote 17 cites a paper from 1982.
Compare the article on intrusive R I linked before:
> This is now common enough in parts of England that, by 1997, the linguist John C. Wells considered it objectively part of Received Pronunciation, though he noted that it was still stigmatized as an incorrect pronunciation, as it is or was in some other standardized non-rhotic accents. Wells writes that at least in RP, "linking /r/ and intrusive /r/ are distinct only historically and orthographically".[17]
Where footnote 17 cites a paper from 1982.
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No. If you had been correct, there would have been no reason to post what I did. But you are 100% wrong on both counts, and I did. (For amusement, see rndmio's comment above.)
I think you're referring to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection
while thaumasiotes is referring to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonotactics
There are examples in the hypercorrection article about people adding an /h-/ in a very similar situation, so what you describe clearly can happen. But are you sure that the R example falls into that category?
It seems to be a distinction about how conscious the change is, or at what layer of language it happens. Isn't that an empirical question that could be tested?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection
while thaumasiotes is referring to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonotactics
There are examples in the hypercorrection article about people adding an /h-/ in a very similar situation, so what you describe clearly can happen. But are you sure that the R example falls into that category?
It seems to be a distinction about how conscious the change is, or at what layer of language it happens. Isn't that an empirical question that could be tested?
Strictly speaking, the masses adopting rhotic pronunciation was, originally, an effort at mimicking a privileged-class affectation. The extra "R" in "drawRing" did not mimic anything, though, but seemed required by the imperfectly deduced rule. Those in actual contact with the privileged class had plenty of examples to, er*, draw upon, denied to those without.
Class markers in speech are always a moving target, a sort of low-grade arms race: low stakes for the upper class, high stakes for lower.
So, pronouncing it "drawRing" is a lower-class marker, similar in a way to "aks" for "ask" in American English.
As always, all of these pronunciations are legitimate and produce no misunderstanding.
[*] "er" is pronounced "uh" or "eh", rhotically.
Class markers in speech are always a moving target, a sort of low-grade arms race: low stakes for the upper class, high stakes for lower.
So, pronouncing it "drawRing" is a lower-class marker, similar in a way to "aks" for "ask" in American English.
As always, all of these pronunciations are legitimate and produce no misunderstanding.
[*] "er" is pronounced "uh" or "eh", rhotically.
> As always, all of these pronunciations are legitimate and produce no misunderstanding.
I'm sorry but pretty much everyone who grew up with English as a second language would like to disagree.
Hearing "drawRing" to this day throws me off -- I have to repeat the noise to myself internally to make sure I understood it right.
I'm sorry but pretty much everyone who grew up with English as a second language would like to disagree.
Hearing "drawRing" to this day throws me off -- I have to repeat the noise to myself internally to make sure I understood it right.
Got a source for your "typical British pronunciation" of "pasta" being non-Italian? I read your comment as asserting that typical Brits pronounce it as "par-sta" with a non-rhotic 'r', but I don't think I've ever heard anyone except the Australian John Torode pronounce it that way.
> I read your comment as asserting that typical Brits pronounce it as "par-sta" with a non-rhotic 'r'
That is exactly the opposite of what TillE wrote. If that were how the British already pronounced the word, there would be no need to change the spelling.
> Got a source for your "typical British pronunciation" of "pasta" being non-Italian?
This is just infantile. You can verify the pronunciation yourself in any number of ways.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/pasta (UK pronunciation: /ˈpæs.tə/)
https://youglish.com/pronounce/pasta/english/uk , if you want audio samples.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pasta#Pronunciation (UK pronunciation: /ˈpæstə/)
That is exactly the opposite of what TillE wrote. If that were how the British already pronounced the word, there would be no need to change the spelling.
> Got a source for your "typical British pronunciation" of "pasta" being non-Italian?
This is just infantile. You can verify the pronunciation yourself in any number of ways.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/pasta (UK pronunciation: /ˈpæs.tə/)
https://youglish.com/pronounce/pasta/english/uk , if you want audio samples.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pasta#Pronunciation (UK pronunciation: /ˈpæstə/)
But Brits can't pronounce their own words properly half the time, in English! Ask a Brit to pronounce "drawing" - you'll get "drawring" back.
Source: expat living in Britain
Source: expat living in Britain
I believe it's called the intrusive 'r'. The upside of it is that it makes the following joke work:
What do you call a one-eyed dinosaur? A dyathinkhesawus. Without the intrusive 'r' this joke would not work.
What do you call a one-eyed dinosaur? A dyathinkhesawus. Without the intrusive 'r' this joke would not work.
I moaned about this on https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/317198/the-r-sou.... Some good answers to the linked dupe.
Did not know about that discussion. As a "rhotic" person it makes me wince but I accept different accents. In any chat that leans towards getting heavy on this I refer people to The (great) Proclaimers song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=066oSmDRKPA
Wait, so it's not "Berm-uh" and "My-ahn-mar" ?
I didn't realize this, but Wikipedia says
> In Burmese, the pronunciation depends on the register used and is either Bama (pronounced [bəmà]) or Myamah (pronounced [mjəmà]).
That is, there is originally no R sound in either word in Burmese, as thaumasiotes clarified.
> In Burmese, the pronunciation depends on the register used and is either Bama (pronounced [bəmà]) or Myamah (pronounced [mjəmà]).
That is, there is originally no R sound in either word in Burmese, as thaumasiotes clarified.
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Lots of people replying based on what sound like personal preferences or language biases; I'm guessing the biggest reason, if this is accurate, is that no one ever asks and GP assumes no one will.
Not sure why people didn't just agree on -i. Qatar -> Qatari, Zanzibar -> Zanzibari, to me Myanmar -> Myanmari makes perfect sense to me.
The -i ending comes from Arabic which makes it seem a bit out of place in Myanmar (not to mention the obvious religious tension).
-ese, -ian, -an and -n all come from Latin via routes of varying directness, which is why they feel somewhat "neutral" in English (e.g. Congolese and Japanese both seem cromulent and not intrinsically African or Asian).
-ese, -ian, -an and -n all come from Latin via routes of varying directness, which is why they feel somewhat "neutral" in English (e.g. Congolese and Japanese both seem cromulent and not intrinsically African or Asian).
> (e.g. Congolese and Japanese both seem cromulent and not intrinsically African or Asian)
I have faced questions from Chinese people about why only Asians receive an -ese suffix in English.
I have faced questions from Chinese people about why only Asians receive an -ese suffix in English.
"Chinese" in English comes from Portuguese ("chinês"), who were some of the earliest Europeans there. -ês and -ese both come from the same Latin origin.
I hazard that words like Cantonese, etc., came either via the same route, or by back-formation to match the existing wider term "Chinese".
Interestingly, "Japanner" used to be another word for a Japanese person.
I hazard that words like Cantonese, etc., came either via the same route, or by back-formation to match the existing wider term "Chinese".
Interestingly, "Japanner" used to be another word for a Japanese person.
How did we arrive at Guamanian as the adjective for of Guam?
myanmarese maybe? or myanmarian? haha
Swissi?
Austriai?
Norwayi?
Austriai?
Norwayi?
I have heard the people of Myanmar referred to as “Myanese” many times, in English, in Thailand. Enough that I might guess it’ll establish itself, like Czech people being “from Czech” did in much of Europe (in English).
Czech people are usually referred in English as being from Czechia (if you don't wanna use the unwieldy Czech Republic)
Yeah, that’s what one might expect, given than “Czechia” is pretty close to some historical words for the area.
But it has not been my experience at all that Czechia was the “usual” word, at least among English speakers in Europe. Nor do I personally find it any less unwieldy than “Czech Republic” but that’s my bias.
Assuming you also speak from experience, is there any easy way to verify this?
I don’t mean the official name, I mean what people actually say in English when referring to the country a Czech comes from.
But it has not been my experience at all that Czechia was the “usual” word, at least among English speakers in Europe. Nor do I personally find it any less unwieldy than “Czech Republic” but that’s my bias.
Assuming you also speak from experience, is there any easy way to verify this?
I don’t mean the official name, I mean what people actually say in English when referring to the country a Czech comes from.
I have no experience of what English speakers say in Europe. My only option to refer to the country is "the Czech Republic", but the one Czech guy I've met did ask that people refer to the country as "Czech".
Even more awesome is that the capitalised version is TÜRKİYE, not TÜRKIYE, which is what you get if you call something like "Türkiye".ToUpper();
It's going to be fun to watch developers wrap their heads around that one...
It's going to be fun to watch developers wrap their heads around that one...
That's complicated:
"Türkiye".ToUpperInvariant()
"Türkiye".ToUpper()
"Türkiye".ToUpper([System.Globalization.CultureInfo]::GetCultureInfo("tr-TR"))
I just got this...
> "Türkiye".capitalize()
UniquenessError("Ankara is already the capital")Something's wrong with your implementation. That shouldn't be a uniqueness constraint as a country may have multiple capitals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_multipl...
Also, "Nauru".capitalize() should succeed as it has no official capital.
(tongue firmly in cheek ;)
Also, "Nauru".capitalize() should succeed as it has no official capital.
(tongue firmly in cheek ;)
Can someone help me? Is this an error?
"Switzerland".capitalize()
"HELVETICA"Switzerland has four official languages, with the English word "Switzerland" having a particular translation to each one. But if you choose a single official name in one of those languages, it is not fair to the others, so in addition an official name in each language, they have an official in a 'neutral' language: Latin.
> Due to its linguistic diversity, Switzerland is known by a variety of native names: Schweiz [ˈʃvaɪts] (German);[note 5] Suisse [sɥis(ə)] (French); Svizzera [ˈzvittsera] (Italian); and Svizra [ˈʒviːtsrɐ, ˈʒviːtsʁɐ] (Romansh).[note 6] On coins and stamps, the Latin name, Confoederatio Helvetica – frequently shortened to "Helvetia" – is used instead of the four national languages.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland
That's also why the ccTLD of Switzerland is .ch.
What you're seeing may be an 'artifact' of that.
> Due to its linguistic diversity, Switzerland is known by a variety of native names: Schweiz [ˈʃvaɪts] (German);[note 5] Suisse [sɥis(ə)] (French); Svizzera [ˈzvittsera] (Italian); and Svizra [ˈʒviːtsrɐ, ˈʒviːtsʁɐ] (Romansh).[note 6] On coins and stamps, the Latin name, Confoederatio Helvetica – frequently shortened to "Helvetia" – is used instead of the four national languages.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland
That's also why the ccTLD of Switzerland is .ch.
What you're seeing may be an 'artifact' of that.
Yeah lots of people confuse that domain for China.
Odd. I get:
"Switzerland".capitalize()
𝔈ℑ𝔇𝔊𝔈𝔑𝔒𝔖𝔖𝔈𝔑𝔖ℭℌ𝔄𝔉𝔗
It looks like Fraktur to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktur
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktur
Got it in one.
Are you in china? That looks like Canton-ese.
It's a thread of jokes. devoutsalsa started with a joke mixing the two meanings of "capital" using a fake example. I joked that "UniquenessError" isn't the right error, as some countries have more than one capital and two countries have no official capital.
One of those two is Switzerland, which has the official Latin name "Confoederatio Helvetica", leading zinekeller joke that the capital form was "HELVETICA". See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Switzerland .
I pretended my implementation of that non-extent programming language generated "Eidgenossenschaft", see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidgenossenschaft . As that's a German word, I decided to use a blackletter typeface, specifically, the Fraktur in Unicode which is meant to encode mathematical alphanumeric symbols, then imply that my locale the reason I got a German word.
One of those two is Switzerland, which has the official Latin name "Confoederatio Helvetica", leading zinekeller joke that the capital form was "HELVETICA". See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Switzerland .
I pretended my implementation of that non-extent programming language generated "Eidgenossenschaft", see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidgenossenschaft . As that's a German word, I decided to use a blackletter typeface, specifically, the Fraktur in Unicode which is meant to encode mathematical alphanumeric symbols, then imply that my locale the reason I got a German word.
...and Switzerland is divided into cantons :)
I can't tell if you're joking or not! :-o What language/framework is this in?
Edit: I now understand this to be a joke. But.., given the craziness that I've seen in the past, this doesn't seem out of the realm of plausibility!
Edit: I now understand this to be a joke. But.., given the craziness that I've seen in the past, this doesn't seem out of the realm of plausibility!
I think you don't have the right fonts installed.
> That shouldn't be a uniqueness constraint as a country may have multiple capitals
And, in theory, two countries could share the same capital (as a condominium which is equal joint territory of both, or some kind of third territory belonging to neither), although I'm not aware that's ever actually happened. But, at the subnational level, it has happened in India – Chandigarh is the joint capital of two Indian states (Punjab and Chandigarh), each of which has it as its capital despite it being in neither of them, as well as being a union territory (and hence also capital of itself).
And, in theory, two countries could share the same capital (as a condominium which is equal joint territory of both, or some kind of third territory belonging to neither), although I'm not aware that's ever actually happened. But, at the subnational level, it has happened in India – Chandigarh is the joint capital of two Indian states (Punjab and Chandigarh), each of which has it as its capital despite it being in neither of them, as well as being a union territory (and hence also capital of itself).
Israel and Palestine.
Mine says:
> "Türkiye".capitalize()
PrivacyError("That's nobody's business but the Turks'")Reminds me of the bug in PHP where they used a call to toUpper without specifying locale to enable their case insensitivity and if your locale was Turkey, you couldn’t call any library calls with an i in them if you typed them in lowercase because, e.g., call to phpinfo() would get case-folded into PHPİNFO().
In JavaScript, you can use `String.prototype.toLocaleUpperCase()`
> 'Türkiye'.toLocaleUpperCase('TR')
'TÜRKİYE'
.ToUpper() is locale-dependent, so can only be used if the locale of the text in question is known. E.g. German ß capitalizes to SS, and .ToUpper().ToLower() should give you either 'ss' or 'ß' depending on what it was before. Always outputting 'ss' is okish and readable, but actually wrong.
Blindly calling .ToUpper() on anything is a typical anglo-centric mistake. Just don't use .ToUpper(), shoutcase is ugly anyways ;)
See also: one of the many "100 fallacies programmers assume about natural written language" documents or such.
Blindly calling .ToUpper() on anything is a typical anglo-centric mistake. Just don't use .ToUpper(), shoutcase is ugly anyways ;)
See also: one of the many "100 fallacies programmers assume about natural written language" documents or such.
Small nitpick: uppercase ẞ was added to Unicode 5.1 in 2007 (https://unicode-table.com/en/1E9E/) and is considered correct German orthography since 2017 (see §25 E3 in https://grammis.ids-mannheim.de/rechtschreibung/6180#par25E3)
How often do you see the new letter in German everyday life? Despite being German myself I don't visit Germany that often these days, I still read a couple of German publications regularly. I have never seen the new letter outside of discussions by software people about character handling.
I do sometimes, but I'm rather sensitive for the ẞ issue: My last name contains an ß and uppercasing would either mean keeping the ß lowercase – the Personalausweis does that (†) and it looks ugly — or doing the ß → SS transformation which is somewhat forbidden in identity documents; a name must be exact. Hence, someday in the future, hopefully, the ẞ. While personal names were a major motivation for the inclusion of the ẞ into Unicode, I’m always happy to see it in the wild in press or book titles or such.
† Although it’s Germany and of course there exists an obscure Verwaltungsvorschrift according to which you can write the non-machine readable field of the Personalausweis/Pass in lowercase, exactly for this use case. I didn’t know that last time but I fully intend to make some poor civil servants life a slight hell the next time I have to renew.
† Although it’s Germany and of course there exists an obscure Verwaltungsvorschrift according to which you can write the non-machine readable field of the Personalausweis/Pass in lowercase, exactly for this use case. I didn’t know that last time but I fully intend to make some poor civil servants life a slight hell the next time I have to renew.
I assumed it was added for shop signs and product packaging (I.e. as a gimmick).
Speaking of surviving Fraktur ligatures, I’m sorry that a couple of others like tz didn’t make it to Roman. It makes poor ß appear lonely.
Speaking of surviving Fraktur ligatures, I’m sorry that a couple of others like tz didn’t make it to Roman. It makes poor ß appear lonely.
I was actually wondering if the driving factor is legal documents. ID cards show names in all-caps letters, which creates the dilemma that your ID might not show your actual name (notwithstanding international standards for travel documents that prescribe transliteration of non-latin characters; see ICAO Doc 9303 Part 3, section 6 [0] for examples)
[0]: https://www.icao.int/publications/Documents/9303_p3_cons_en....
[0]: https://www.icao.int/publications/Documents/9303_p3_cons_en....
That’s a good theory, especially as section 3.1 of that ICAO document explicitly permits the use of ß.
Bringing the thread back to the topic of this comment section: the ICAO document also calls the digits 0123456789 “Arabic” even though their shapes are closer to the original Hindi (Devanagari) forms than to actual Arabic digits — another “Hindi/Turkey” situation
Bringing the thread back to the topic of this comment section: the ICAO document also calls the digits 0123456789 “Arabic” even though their shapes are closer to the original Hindi (Devanagari) forms than to actual Arabic digits — another “Hindi/Turkey” situation
That is correct and solves the roundtrip-problem (in this case and language). But uppercase 'ẞ' is just an additional option at the discretion of the writer, the recommended variant continues to be 'SS'.
> German ß capitalizes to SS, and .ToUpper().ToLower() should give you either 'ss' or 'ß' depending on what it was before
As long as there is no unicode SS character, we are into the "what color are your bits" problem or tolower needs to be language and word aware.
In .NET the uppercase and lowercase functions are culture aware (with defaults to system settings, which breaks more software than you might think) but not word aware AFAIK.
As long as there is no unicode SS character, we are into the "what color are your bits" problem or tolower needs to be language and word aware.
In .NET the uppercase and lowercase functions are culture aware (with defaults to system settings, which breaks more software than you might think) but not word aware AFAIK.
> As long as there is no unicode SS character, we are into the "what color are your bits" problem or tolower needs to be language and word aware.
It turns out there is such a unicode character -- ẞ/ß -- although based on other comments here it looks like it was added fairly recently.
Upper/Lower case stuff just seems to be at an annoying intersection where it has cultural and also programming significance. Or at least, people will use toUpper when they really want some case-insensitive sortable version of the string.
(based on some googling, probably localeCompare is the way to go in javascript at least).
It turns out there is such a unicode character -- ẞ/ß -- although based on other comments here it looks like it was added fairly recently.
Upper/Lower case stuff just seems to be at an annoying intersection where it has cultural and also programming significance. Or at least, people will use toUpper when they really want some case-insensitive sortable version of the string.
(based on some googling, probably localeCompare is the way to go in javascript at least).
I hate the locale nonsense. The decimal point is `.` and not `,`. The rest of this stupid country is wrong
>Blindly calling .ToUpper() on anything is a typical anglo-centric mistake.
Yes, one that you might make if you were for example, trying to make English text uppercase. Which is why it would be daft for anyone to suggest that their country has two different English spellings depending on the character case.
Yes, one that you might make if you were for example, trying to make English text uppercase. Which is why it would be daft for anyone to suggest that their country has two different English spellings depending on the character case.
.toUpper() is a quick and mostly effective way to normalise strings for comparison if you're not sure what case the two strings to compare are in (eg: one has been input by a user). Yes, it's a shortcut, and occasionally you'll end up with a miss, but it's good enough to work 99% of the time, and the alternative is a LOT of code and data changes to handle a very small proportion of cases.
Hmm I think you miss the point. In some programming environments (like C# and Java) .toUpper() is always incorrect in code unless you are displaying the resulting string in a UI, as it uses the "current locale", which is whatever the user has selected for the machine. When e.g. comparing strings case-insensitively, you should always explicitly specify the locale where the conversion should happen instead of relying on an external configuration variable.
JavaScript actually seems to be the smart one here - its default .toUpperCase() uses the "locale-insensitive case mappings in the Unicode Character Database".
JavaScript actually seems to be the smart one here - its default .toUpperCase() uses the "locale-insensitive case mappings in the Unicode Character Database".
> the user has selected for the machine
I don't think most Java and C# software is desktop apps? Surely in most cases it's the locale selected for the server or VM, which should be consistent?
(I'm not saying it's good coding practice, mind you, but it probably ends up accidentally working in a lot of cases.)
I don't think most Java and C# software is desktop apps? Surely in most cases it's the locale selected for the server or VM, which should be consistent?
(I'm not saying it's good coding practice, mind you, but it probably ends up accidentally working in a lot of cases.)
You write like you can know how and where the code will get executed in the future. :) Do you think that the authors of Windows 95 ever imagined the system would one day get ported to an obscure subset of a functional scripting language (Asm.js variety of JavaScript), and get booted in a hyper-text browser running on a PDA device with internet connection (web browser on a smartphone)? Yet - here we are: https://win95.ajf.me/
> I'm not saying it's good coding practice, mind you, but it probably ends up accidentally working in most cases
Fully agree. It's still bad practice and I high-five every linter that automatically flags it.
> I'm not saying it's good coding practice, mind you, but it probably ends up accidentally working in most cases
Fully agree. It's still bad practice and I high-five every linter that automatically flags it.
I did indeed. Thanks - yes, I was referring to JavaScript's .toUpperCase(), silly oversight and assumption on my side.
Thanks for the correction!
Thanks for the correction!
You make a good case (ha!). What if toUpper() and toLower() were omitted from standard libraries? Usually they are used, incorrectly, to do something like string comparison, which could be better served by a more specific method.
Only sz should use ß. Ss stays ss even in German-german. Switzerland got rid of the sz/ss distinction a long time ago.
So you need to be culture and word aware to do it „right“.
'sz' for 'ß' is sometimes used to make things roundtrip-proof in capslock, e.g. on military stencils. HTML calls it 'szlig'. Also, some use "Esszet" as the name of the character. But all are wrong in that ß isn't a ligature of s and z, it is a ligature of s and s. The shape of the character stems from the fact that in fractur writing and even some grotesk fonts, 's' at the end of a word was written 's', while 's' within a word was written 'ſ'. Thus the end of a word like Fuss was written Fuſs, giving a ligature of Fuß. No 'z' anywhere.
Originally ß arose as a ligature of s and z, or rather ſ and ʒ. In many older texts, or even current fonts, the second part of the ligature is indisputably a long-tailed ʒ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9F
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9F
> some use "Esszet" as the name of the character
I believe the actual name is Eszett.
I believe the actual name is Eszett.
Only “wrong” in light of current usage, but not historically.
By this measure, the English name of “W” would be wrong because it’s not actually a “double-U” but a “double-V”. But at the time of the letter’s formation, U and V were not yet separate letters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W
By this measure, the English name of “W” would be wrong because it’s not actually a “double-U” but a “double-V”. But at the time of the letter’s formation, U and V were not yet separate letters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W
The Swedes get this "right", and call it [ˈdɵ̂bːɛlˌveː].
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_alphabet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_alphabet
In Dutch it's even more sane, the alphabet just goes V = vee, W = wee.
Oh wow, didn’t know that!
French as well, although the elegance gained is quickly tarnished by calling y "Greek i".
I always thought that German z used to look something between Ꙁ & з. ʒ looks pretty close so ſз became ß but Latin transliteration rules were ss instead. At least that's what I was taught in German class.
In Python:
>>> "Türkiye".upper()
'TÜRKIYE'
>>> import locale
>>> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, "tr_TR.UTF-8")
'tr_TR.UTF-8'
>>> "Türkiye".upper()
'TÜRKIYE' # Expect "TÜRKİYE"
>>> locale.resetlocale()Thank you for calling locale.resetlocale() before exiting.
Maybe there should be a context manager?
Absolutely. It's not that hard to write your own though:
import locale
from contextlib import contextmanager
@contextmanager
def use_locale(*args, **kwargs):
locale.setlocale(*args, **kwargs)
yield
locale.resetlocale()
> Maybe there should be a context manager?
Even despite the:
> Absolutely.
My absolute least favorite response to this is:
> It's not that hard to write your own though:
Even despite the:
> Absolutely.
My absolute least favorite response to this is:
> It's not that hard to write your own though:
The alternative is trying to get one merged into the standard library. At least writing your own is better than not having one!
I often see this answer as a reason it's not particularly important to have on in a standard library.
I strongly disagree with that sentiment as often these simple things have subtle gotchas, and/or subtle differences in possible net effects creating much bigger problems than their diminutive implementations would suggest.
I strongly disagree with that sentiment as often these simple things have subtle gotchas, and/or subtle differences in possible net effects creating much bigger problems than their diminutive implementations would suggest.
I generally feel the same way as you. My comment about getting it merged was not meant to imply that it shouldn't get merged, but that it might be difficult to. I find it very hard to predict which of these small QoL features will be accepted by the core devs and which features will be rejected for some reason or other.
Well dang: https://docs.python.org/3.12/library/locale.html
> There is no way to perform case conversions and character classifications according to the locale. For (Unicode) text strings these are done according to the character value only, while for byte strings, the conversions and classifications are done according to the ASCII value of the byte, and bytes whose high bit is set (i.e., non-ASCII bytes) are never converted or considered part of a character class such as letter or whitespace.
> There is no way to perform case conversions and character classifications according to the locale. For (Unicode) text strings these are done according to the character value only, while for byte strings, the conversions and classifications are done according to the ASCII value of the byte, and bytes whose high bit is set (i.e., non-ASCII bytes) are never converted or considered part of a character class such as letter or whitespace.
I actually like that python doesn't do locale aware case conversions. You can use ICU* for that, though it shows more warts (like the i in republic and that you have to handle Chinese banknotes differently as well):
edit: Oh neat there's a hansfin keyword that I had not known about.
https://unicode-org.github.io/icu/userguide/locale/#keywords
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6224177/how-to-convert-e...
% env - LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 PATH="$PATH" python3
Python 3.8.12 (default, Nov 13 2021, 10:49:08)
[Clang 11.0.3 (clang-1103.0.32.62)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from icu import UnicodeString, Locale
>>> s = b'the Republic of T\xc3\xbcrkiye'
>>> s = s.decode()
>>> s
'the Republic of Türkiye'
>>> lc = Locale("TR")
>>> s = UnicodeString(s)
>>> s
<UnicodeString: 'the Republic of Türkiye'>
>>> s = s.toUpper(lc)
>>> s
<UnicodeString: 'THE REPUBLİC OF TÜRKİYE'>
>>> s = str(s)
>>> s
'THE REPUBLİC OF TÜRKİYE'
>>> s.encode()
b'THE REPUBL\xc4\xb0C OF T\xc3\x9cRK\xc4\xb0YE'
>>> s = UnicodeString(s)
>>> lc = Locale("CN")
>>> s = s.toLower(lc)
>>> s
<UnicodeString: 'the republi̇c of türki̇ye'>
>>> s = '壹,貳,參,肆,伍,陸,柒,捌,玖,拾,佰,仟,萬'
>>> s.encode()
b'\xe5\xa3\xb9,\xe8\xb2\xb3,\xe5\x8f\x83,\xe8\x82\x86,\xe4\xbc\x8d,\xe9\x99\xb8,\xe6\x9f\x92,\xe6\x8d\x8c,\xe7\x8e\x96,\xe6\x8b\xbe,\xe4\xbd\xb0,\xe4\xbb\x9f,\xe8\x90\xac'
>>> s = UnicodeString(s)
>>> s
<UnicodeString: '壹,貳,參,肆,伍,陸,柒,捌,玖,拾,佰,仟,萬'>
>>> s = s.toLower(lc)
>>> s
<UnicodeString: '壹,貳,參,肆,伍,陸,柒,捌,玖,拾,佰,仟,萬'>
edit: Oh neat there's a hansfin keyword that I had not known about.
https://unicode-org.github.io/icu/userguide/locale/#keywords
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6224177/how-to-convert-e...
Definitely odd, I did a bit more checking in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32070549
But `"türki̇ye".upper()` works correctly, at least in Python 3.9.
Interestingly, `"türki̇ye".title()` does _not_ work correctly, returning `"Türki̇Ye"`, presumably because the "title-case" algorithm incorrectly detects \xcc\x87 as punctuation. Not sure if this has been fixed in 3.10 or 3.11.
> The algorithm uses a simple language-independent definition of a word as groups of consecutive letters. The definition works in many contexts but it means that apostrophes in contractions and possessives form word boundaries, which may not be the desired result ... The string.capwords() function does not have this problem, as it splits words on spaces only.
[0]: https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#str.title
[1]: https://docs.python.org/3/library/string.html#string.capword...
Interestingly, `"türki̇ye".title()` does _not_ work correctly, returning `"Türki̇Ye"`, presumably because the "title-case" algorithm incorrectly detects \xcc\x87 as punctuation. Not sure if this has been fixed in 3.10 or 3.11.
Python 3.9.13 (main, May 24 2022, 21:13:51)
[Clang 13.1.6 (clang-1316.0.21.2)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> s = 'TÜRKİYE'
>>> s.lower()
'türki̇ye'
>>> s.lower().upper()
'TÜRKİYE'
>>> s.lower().title()
'Türki̇Ye'
>>> s.lower().encode()
b't\xc3\xbcrki\xcc\x87ye
> The algorithm uses a simple language-independent definition of a word as groups of consecutive letters. The definition works in many contexts but it means that apostrophes in contractions and possessives form word boundaries, which may not be the desired result ... The string.capwords() function does not have this problem, as it splits words on spaces only.
[0]: https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#str.title
[1]: https://docs.python.org/3/library/string.html#string.capword...
Compared this vs another comment and its interesting. Pulled the strings directly from the ISO website. I wonder if the 'i' in the lower case one is supposed to be special and not ASCII?
Python 3.8.10 (default, Mar 15 2022, 12:22:08)
[GCC 9.4.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> short_name_lower = "Türkiye"
>>> short_name = "TÜRKİYE"
>>> short_name.encode() ## The Ü and İ are UTF-8 chars
b'T\xc3\x9cRK\xc4\xb0YE'
>>> short_name_lower.encode() ## Note only the ü is special, i is just ASCII
b'T\xc3\xbcrkiye'
>>> short_name.lower()
'türki̇ye'
>>> short_name_lower.lower()
'türkiye'
>>> short_name.lower() == short_name_lower.lower() ## Looks the same, but it isn't
False
>>> short_name.lower().encode() ## The i has extra \xcc\x87 here
b't\xc3\xbcrki\xcc\x87ye'
>>> short_name_lower.lower().encode() ## The i doesn't have the extra here
b't\xc3\xbcrkiye'
>>> short_name_lower.upper().encode() ## So this is wrong too, since its just an ASCII i to start
b'T\xc3\x9cRKIYE'
It's apparently a locale-specific capitalization rule: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/problematic-case-conv...
> In Turkish, the character “i” becomes “İ” when capitalized, while the “ı” (a Turkish-specific character) becomes “I” (which looks just like the Latin upper case “I”).
> The out-of-the-box capitalization method implemented by developers or by localization tools by default is often the standard ‘toUpper()’, which doesn’t follow language-specific rules and will convert the “i” into an “I”. As for the lower case “ı”, it will simply fail to capitalize it at all. This will result in a very strange looking text in the game with uncapitalized characters and wrongly capitalized ones.
> In Turkish, the character “i” becomes “İ” when capitalized, while the “ı” (a Turkish-specific character) becomes “I” (which looks just like the Latin upper case “I”).
> The out-of-the-box capitalization method implemented by developers or by localization tools by default is often the standard ‘toUpper()’, which doesn’t follow language-specific rules and will convert the “i” into an “I”. As for the lower case “ı”, it will simply fail to capitalize it at all. This will result in a very strange looking text in the game with uncapitalized characters and wrongly capitalized ones.
On my browsers (both Vivaldi and Safari, on MacOS), your string "türki̇ye" is rendered with two dots over the i (stacked vertically). I don't know if this is what you intended, but it doesn't seem to me as the correct lowercase form. But I'll defer to someone more versed in the local customs.
This might actually be a font thing, depending on whether any given font provides a precomposed version of "i" + "combining dot above" (and rendering it as just "i") or not.
Very interesting. On Windows in Chrome its just an i for me, but in Firefox its showing an extra dot between i̇y. But in my comment I can't get that to show up even in Firefox.
It's not i̇, it's i. Also capwords only capitalizes the first letter in each word. Here it's a bandaid. For locale-aware case conversions in python use ICU:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32076177
https://unicode-org.github.io/icu/userguide/transforms/casem...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32076177
https://unicode-org.github.io/icu/userguide/transforms/casem...
> watch developers wrap their heads
<img src="/img/turkiye.gif" alt="Turkey" />
<img src="/img/turkiye.gif" alt="Turkey" />
> It's going to be fun to watch developers wrap their heads around that one...
No, it will not. Nobody gives a damn. Nobody will implement it.
I am still trying to get people to correctly denote beginning and end of a day (much more useful, practical). Everybody I work with seems to be bent on using 23:59:59 as the end of the day rather than start of next day. Explaining that there is no 1s delay between end of one day and start of the next isn't helping either.
No, it will not. Nobody gives a damn. Nobody will implement it.
I am still trying to get people to correctly denote beginning and end of a day (much more useful, practical). Everybody I work with seems to be bent on using 23:59:59 as the end of the day rather than start of next day. Explaining that there is no 1s delay between end of one day and start of the next isn't helping either.
Sit on my lap youngling, and I will tell you tales of i18n horror... and I'm from an English-speaking country!
A realistic scenario is an Australian writing French poetry while on holidays in Turkey. Now you have an OS GUI with en-GB as the language, licensing and date/number formatting as per the AU region, French spelling dictionary, a US-101 keyboard layout, Turkey as the location, and GMT+3 as the time zone.
It's a rare piece of software that can handle this. Few vendors have staff that have even heard of such exotic places.
There are still people... many people... that deny the existence of places outside of the United States of America. Such filthy, heathen locations are surely a thing of myth, or legend!
Places where dates are formatted with the days before the month, followed by the year in some sort of weird, unnatural order.
Nations that have fallen into the trap of some sort of mass hallucination, or shared dream of common measurement units. Some sort of... metric, for space, time, and matter. Maybe they've been watching too much Star Trek!
Multicultural countries where strange unions of races are commonplace, and couples may want to watch Netflix in one language, but have subtitles in a different language. Neither of which are English for the hearing-impaired! Surely, nobody but the deaf are unable to comprehend the universal English language! Not to mention that such taboo couplings are, thankfully, still banned on this stream of holy virtue and shall not be permitted by the data scientists that have declared: "Your union is a statistically negligible!"
A realistic scenario is an Australian writing French poetry while on holidays in Turkey. Now you have an OS GUI with en-GB as the language, licensing and date/number formatting as per the AU region, French spelling dictionary, a US-101 keyboard layout, Turkey as the location, and GMT+3 as the time zone.
It's a rare piece of software that can handle this. Few vendors have staff that have even heard of such exotic places.
There are still people... many people... that deny the existence of places outside of the United States of America. Such filthy, heathen locations are surely a thing of myth, or legend!
Places where dates are formatted with the days before the month, followed by the year in some sort of weird, unnatural order.
Nations that have fallen into the trap of some sort of mass hallucination, or shared dream of common measurement units. Some sort of... metric, for space, time, and matter. Maybe they've been watching too much Star Trek!
Multicultural countries where strange unions of races are commonplace, and couples may want to watch Netflix in one language, but have subtitles in a different language. Neither of which are English for the hearing-impaired! Surely, nobody but the deaf are unable to comprehend the universal English language! Not to mention that such taboo couplings are, thankfully, still banned on this stream of holy virtue and shall not be permitted by the data scientists that have declared: "Your union is a statistically negligible!"
> There are still people... many people... that deny the existence of places outside of the United States of America.
Two fun anecdotes my mother has recounted when we were all in Denver for ~5 months in Denver 1996:
1. Asked where we were from on one occasion (after hearing an Australian accent): “Australia.” Response: “Oh, did you come by bus?” Now it is possible that there was a misunderstanding there, but mum doesn’t think so.
2. Of those that didn’t already know, only one person successfully identified where we were from, and that person was deaf. (It’s fascinating to try something like this on video without audio where there’s nothing obvious static to identify nationality: I find I can identify both Australian and American correctly at a rate considerably better than random, without ever having made a study of it.)
Two fun anecdotes my mother has recounted when we were all in Denver for ~5 months in Denver 1996:
1. Asked where we were from on one occasion (after hearing an Australian accent): “Australia.” Response: “Oh, did you come by bus?” Now it is possible that there was a misunderstanding there, but mum doesn’t think so.
2. Of those that didn’t already know, only one person successfully identified where we were from, and that person was deaf. (It’s fascinating to try something like this on video without audio where there’s nothing obvious static to identify nationality: I find I can identify both Australian and American correctly at a rate considerably better than random, without ever having made a study of it.)
Can't we use our USA-centrism (centricity?) to make the behavior of the country drop-down just a little bit better? Surely I'm not the only one burdened with having to scroll past a hundred of these .. ahem.. OTHER... countries.. to find "United States of America".
Yes, I could begin typing "Unite.." but we all know that ends up on United Arab Emirates, and then when I continue on to "...d Sta..." and it doesn't work, only to find out this country picker uses "USA" or something similar so it breaks the autocomplete muscle memory.
Clearly, if we're the center of the known universe, we could use our power to make it a little easier to enter my billing and shipping information.
Yes, I could begin typing "Unite.." but we all know that ends up on United Arab Emirates, and then when I continue on to "...d Sta..." and it doesn't work, only to find out this country picker uses "USA" or something similar so it breaks the autocomplete muscle memory.
Clearly, if we're the center of the known universe, we could use our power to make it a little easier to enter my billing and shipping information.
That just pisses off everyone else on the planet - plus the other countries in the Americas that consist of united states, and who equally consider themselves "American" much as French people are "European"
I know you're joking, but ideally forms like that should put the current country based on GeoIP at the top; these long selects really are kind of annoying: sometimes I accidentally use the keyboard to do weird shit because I accidentally didn't select the browser, some JS dropdowns don't allow typing at all, naming is somewhat inconsistent for some countries ("Netherlands" or "The Netherlands"?)
I'm only half joking! Yeah, I've found some put your GeoIP'd country at the top, which should be the default behavior. That throws me off occasionally, too, but I appreciate it!
"Airstrip 1"?
Woah woah woah. Some of us don’t implement things because marketing/business/the client/management doesn’t care, not because we don’t care.
Some of use have moved beyond “falsehoods programmers believe about X” to “falsehoods the people in charge believe about X.”
Some of use have moved beyond “falsehoods programmers believe about X” to “falsehoods the people in charge believe about X.”
Huh, but there is no 1 second gap between 23:59:59 and 00:00:00. The time is 23:59:59 for a whole second, and then once that second is done, the time is 00:00:00 the next day.
It depends whether you interpret "23:59:59" as being an instant (1 second before the end of most days) or a duration (the last second of most days).
23:59:59.500 is after 23:59:59 when interpreted as an instant, but it is part of 23:59:59 as a duration.
23:59:59.500 is after 23:59:59 when interpreted as an instant, but it is part of 23:59:59 as a duration.
Thats why the day doesn't end at the instant of 23:59:59, nor does it end at 23:59:60 (if there is a leap second). It actually ends at 24:00:00. Which is the same instant in time as 00:00:00 of the following day. Every conforming implementation of ISO 8601 should know about that. And all software should conform to ISO 8601.
People seriously overestimate how many websites support Latin Extended-A to even be able to display ü or İ.
As someone whose last name contains a character from the same Unicode subset (ć), it's often a white square or just flat-out removed from my last name completely.
As someone whose last name contains a character from the same Unicode subset (ć), it's often a white square or just flat-out removed from my last name completely.
Huh? 23:59:59 is neither, it's one second early.
I think that's the point, people insist on using 23:59:59 as end of day instead of the correct 24:00:00 (which happens to be the same instant as 00:00:00 of the next day, since there's no gap between days)
My working theory on why this happens is that there are two different models and people sometimes have problem choosing the correct one.
When you say "Thursday" you mean entire 24h period. It is not a point in time, it is a label for a span of time.
But when you say "1 pm" you don't mean an entire hour, you mean a point in time that is more or less precisely 1pm.
It seems people extend the first model to a lot of cases where it is not correct. And so for many people their mental model of 23:59:59 is a label for a span of time that is one second in length.
If your model is that a day consists of 86400 "seconds", each second being a span of time of length of one second with a label like 12:37:28, then 23:59:59 is the last second of the day and 00:00:00 is the first second of the next day.
When you say "Thursday" you mean entire 24h period. It is not a point in time, it is a label for a span of time.
But when you say "1 pm" you don't mean an entire hour, you mean a point in time that is more or less precisely 1pm.
It seems people extend the first model to a lot of cases where it is not correct. And so for many people their mental model of 23:59:59 is a label for a span of time that is one second in length.
If your model is that a day consists of 86400 "seconds", each second being a span of time of length of one second with a label like 12:37:28, then 23:59:59 is the last second of the day and 00:00:00 is the first second of the next day.
Working with spans is fraught with peril, though. It invites off-by-one errors.
If there's one person in the queue to the checkout, then span-wise, that person is the start of the queue and the end of the queue. But if the start and end are the same, what is the length of the queue?
(If you still insist it's one, you'll not be able to answer the question where the start and end of an empty queue is. There is no first or last person!)
If there's one person in the queue to the checkout, then span-wise, that person is the start of the queue and the end of the queue. But if the start and end are the same, what is the length of the queue?
(If you still insist it's one, you'll not be able to answer the question where the start and end of an empty queue is. There is no first or last person!)
Fun fact, ISO 8601 used to allow 24:00:00 notation (as a synonym of 00:00:00), but in the latest version of the standard it does not.
Honest question, what are you supposed to do instead?
You add 1 day (not 24 hours) to beginning of day. If you have a good library it should handle it correctly.
> 1 day (not 24 hours)
Just to spell it out, some days have 25 hours or 23 hours due to daylight savings, or 24 hours and 1 second because of leap seconds, etc.
Just to spell it out, some days have 25 hours or 23 hours due to daylight savings, or 24 hours and 1 second because of leap seconds, etc.
Well you clearly can't use 24:00:00 universally as the end of your day because sometimes there's a 24:00:01 on some days?
You can. The leap second is always 23:59:60
Yep, I may have forgotten about that. Shame on me.
Not understanding this complaint.
```TSQL select cast('2022-07-12 24:00:00' as datetime) ``` >>> The conversion of a varchar data type to a datetime data type resulted in an out-of-range value.
```python from datetime import datetime d: datetime = datetime(2022, 7, 12, 24, 0, 0) ``` >>> ValueError: hour must be in 0..23
```TSQL select cast('2022-07-12 24:00:00' as datetime) ``` >>> The conversion of a varchar data type to a datetime data type resulted in an out-of-range value.
```python from datetime import datetime d: datetime = datetime(2022, 7, 12, 24, 0, 0) ``` >>> ValueError: hour must be in 0..23
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Same. Developers have far greater problems.
I find it funny, Turkey was aldready a good test case for handling international users data :), I spend some hours on a bug in json with integer parsing of some users integer inputs in rares cases.
It was because of the way they write/parse integer using dots as separators. (Yes, the real problem was me having forgot to force server and client to use the same locale settings :) )
An old article talking of it : https://blog.codinghorror.com/whats-wrong-with-turkey/
It was because of the way they write/parse integer using dots as separators. (Yes, the real problem was me having forgot to force server and client to use the same locale settings :) )
An old article talking of it : https://blog.codinghorror.com/whats-wrong-with-turkey/
(if you're curious: Turkish has dotted and dotless "i": https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dotted_and_dotless_I)
Developers should just use Unicode CLDR data.
https://cldr.unicode.org/
https://unicode-org.github.io/cldr-staging/charts/latest/sum...
https://cldr.unicode.org/
https://unicode-org.github.io/cldr-staging/charts/latest/sum...
This doesn't have any provisions for upper-case representation.
It's crazy to assume people will use umlauts in URLs. As far as internet users are concerned, TÜRKİYE is turkiye, end of story.
PS. It's much easier to type umlauts on Mac. Just hold 'u' to see the variants.
PS. It's much easier to type umlauts on Mac. Just hold 'u' to see the variants.
As a Mac user from the beginning I was about to say "that's an iPad, not a Mac", but lo and behold!
On a Mac now the alphabetic and digit keys do not autorepeat when held but instead pop up little menus of variants. Shifted alphabetic keys get different variants appropriate to their letter. Sadly for TÜRKİYE the single dot capital "i" is not one of them.
At least for my settings, none of the digits get options, nor do they autorepeat.
A completely useful overloading of "long press" of a keyboard key, but completely undiscoverable unless you make long strings of "vvvvvvvvv" as a pointer or some such, then you get a disappointment instead of what you wanted, but you will be enlightened.
On a Mac now the alphabetic and digit keys do not autorepeat when held but instead pop up little menus of variants. Shifted alphabetic keys get different variants appropriate to their letter. Sadly for TÜRKİYE the single dot capital "i" is not one of them.
At least for my settings, none of the digits get options, nor do they autorepeat.
A completely useful overloading of "long press" of a keyboard key, but completely undiscoverable unless you make long strings of "vvvvvvvvv" as a pointer or some such, then you get a disappointment instead of what you wanted, but you will be enlightened.
Not everywhere. In Terminal, the letters just repeat.
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That's horrible. The Turkish "i" is a never ending source of locale nightmares. I really wish they would pick a new letter for one of the sounds and use the standard "i" for the other. Like maybe use a diaresis.
I wish the word "read" is read as read instead of read in past tense form.
Funny, there was a time when I was still learning English (well, it's a never-ending process, but still), and for quite some time I was using "red" as a past tense of "read"!
No spell-checker ever corrected me :-) In fact no one did, I just noticed one day that it's not how it's spelled in books...
IPA uses ɨ for the central sound.
Sometımes you see people wrıte lıke thıs or THİS when they are unused to the Turkish keyboard and it creates a lot of problems for some software, even crashes (to upper and back to lower is not the same word!).
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How does ISO country names actually work? It's clearly using the English name for countries; Norway is listed as Norway, not as Norge. Does that mean Türkiye is now the English name for the country? Or is it now the only country with its own language's name rather than the English name in the registry?
Basically, what's going on here?
Basically, what's going on here?
This is part of the ISO-3166 standard (free draft here[1], official pdf is payware[2]). AFAIK the ISO standards are only available in English and French, so you'll only get the English and French names.
The United Nations has a list of official country names in six languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish) [3]. Beyond that, if you want official country names in their native languages or X country in Y language, you'll have to compile them yourself.
[1] https://cdn.standards.iteh.ai/samples/72482/cbb6318e772a4f22...
[2] https://www.iso.org/iso-3166-country-codes.html (links to the pdf near the bottom)
[3] https://unstats.un.org/unsd/geoinfo/ungegn/docs/11th-uncsgn-... and https://unterm.un.org/
The United Nations has a list of official country names in six languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish) [3]. Beyond that, if you want official country names in their native languages or X country in Y language, you'll have to compile them yourself.
[1] https://cdn.standards.iteh.ai/samples/72482/cbb6318e772a4f22...
[2] https://www.iso.org/iso-3166-country-codes.html (links to the pdf near the bottom)
[3] https://unstats.un.org/unsd/geoinfo/ungegn/docs/11th-uncsgn-... and https://unterm.un.org/
> Basically, what's going on here?
Inflation is ~75%. The Sultan wants distractions.
Inflation is ~75%. The Sultan wants distractions.
Yep.
Official value is 78.62% [1]
Unofficial rate is 175.55% [2]
[1] https://www.tcmb.gov.tr/wps/wcm/connect/TR/TCMB+TR/Main+Menu...
[2] https://enagrup.org/
Official value is 78.62% [1]
Unofficial rate is 175.55% [2]
[1] https://www.tcmb.gov.tr/wps/wcm/connect/TR/TCMB+TR/Main+Menu...
[2] https://enagrup.org/
Follow-up question: what if other countries follow suit, especially ones that don't use a Latin-based alphabet? Egypt is formally called "جمهورية مصر العربية" in its native language - should that be recorded as the ISO Full name for EG?
I think Egypt should be forced to revert to hieroglyphs.
Actually the name "Egypt" comes from the Greek pronunciation of the ancient Egyptian capital Memphis ( at least for most of the time it was).
The current official name is "Junhuriyah Misr al-Arabiyah" which is Arab Republic of Egypt in English. This is not something special. a lot of countries have something like "republic of" in their names.
The current official name is "Junhuriyah Misr al-Arabiyah" which is Arab Republic of Egypt in English. This is not something special. a lot of countries have something like "republic of" in their names.
> a lot of countries have something like "republic of" in their names.
Well, that depends. The name for China the administrative region is 中华人民共和国, but I wouldn't really want to call that the name of the country. That's 中国, and if a regime change occurred, the name of the country would still be 中国, even if the name of the government were no longer 中华人民共和国.
Well, that depends. The name for China the administrative region is 中华人民共和国, but I wouldn't really want to call that the name of the country. That's 中国, and if a regime change occurred, the name of the country would still be 中国, even if the name of the government were no longer 中华人民共和国.
Yeah, numerous Communist regimes have/had either "People's" or "Democratic" (or in the case of North Korea, both) in their names. Normally when the Communist regime fell, this was removed,but the main part of the name preserved.
It's not strictly a Soviet thing. When Ukraine declared its independence from Russia back in 1917, it was as "Ukrainian People's Republic", but it was definitely not communist or even particularly socialist. Ditto "Belarusian People's Republic". As I understand, in both cases the intent was to convey that it is a nation-state of the people that inhabit it, and not a part of a large empire anymore.
We'd need to touch up our school curriculum (well, even more than we already do).
Türkiye is the new official English-language name for the country
ISO is not in charge of the English language. I don't expect dictionaries to change any time soon just because ISO says so. Turkey has been the proper English translation for their country name since a very long time and it will be correct English for a long time. Of course, with English it is a bit unclear in any case who decides what is and isn't correct. Certainly not the Turkish government or ISO.
What's next? The Germans insisting on Deutschland as the official ISO name (it's still Germany)? The Chinese insisting on using chines characters? I'm not sure why ISO did this. It sounds political to me.
If you need place name translations, geonames is a decent data set: https://www.geonames.org/export/
You can look up the correct translations and transliterations by iso country and language code. It still calls Turkey by its English name, as it should.
What's next? The Germans insisting on Deutschland as the official ISO name (it's still Germany)? The Chinese insisting on using chines characters? I'm not sure why ISO did this. It sounds political to me.
If you need place name translations, geonames is a decent data set: https://www.geonames.org/export/
You can look up the correct translations and transliterations by iso country and language code. It still calls Turkey by its English name, as it should.
In 2016, the country formerly known as The Czech Republic declared that its English name was now Czechia.
This is now its official ISO name, how it shows up in the Geonames database, and how it is commonly referred to in places like news media.
This is now its official ISO name, how it shows up in the Geonames database, and how it is commonly referred to in places like news media.
A small nitpick, the country isn't "formerly known as the Czech Republic".
"Czechia" was adopted as the new official short name. The long name is still also correct.
"Czechia" was adopted as the new official short name. The long name is still also correct.
So this is why it's good to pay attention to deeply nested HN threads. Because I didn't realise this was the case - media covered the "Czech Republic is now 'Czechia'" thing and my friend group are split about 80/20 (majority using "Czech Republic", inc. me). I'm glad to hear both are technically correct!
To be completely fair, the context in which it's still called "The Czech Republic" is the same context that you would say "The Federal Republic of Germany"
Technically that’s true, but it has never been common to refer to the country as “The Federal Republic of Germany” so it’s not quite the same thing
I don't disagree (and I certainly would never correct anyone who says Czech Republic), but "Federal Republic of Germany" usage was fairly common before Germany was reunited.
People would say "I'm going to visit my brother in Federal Republic of Germany", or "I'm going to ... West Germany?". That doesn't sound right
> If you need place name translations, geonames is a decent data set: https://www.geonames.org/export/
That’s a great resource to keep around, thanks! A convenient source for the unfortunately common “but you must not translate place names” argument.
That’s a great resource to keep around, thanks! A convenient source for the unfortunately common “but you must not translate place names” argument.
No its not. This is not French, we don't have a governing body. And they def can't expect us to use a name with characters we can't even type. No way am I looking up to copypasta the name every time I need to use it.
The umlaut says it's not English.
Practically, yes, but Turkey is a sovereign country and it can ask the UN to call it in English whatever it likes. And indeed - they have requested that their official English-language name be now Türkiye. One of the stated reasons is that Turkey is homophonic with 'turkey' (the thanksgiving meal), which further has a connotation of 'lousy'. This is 100% real, their current leadership is a bit strange: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-61671913
Of course in reality people will keep on calling them Turkey in practical every day English. But the UN has a policy of honoring such requests by the country itself - probably to avoid meddling in politics.
Of course in reality people will keep on calling them Turkey in practical every day English. But the UN has a policy of honoring such requests by the country itself - probably to avoid meddling in politics.
>One of the stated reasons is that Turkey is homophonic with 'turkey' (the thanksgiving meal), which further has a connotation of 'lousy'. This is 100% real, their current leadership is a bit strange
It's not just a coincidence, the bird was named after Turkey because apparently they were first imported to England via the Middle East and so they were called "Turkey cocks". Other European languages call them literally "India cocks", due to a different import route. So it's a bit silly to change the official name of your country because a bird is named after it.
It's not just a coincidence, the bird was named after Turkey because apparently they were first imported to England via the Middle East and so they were called "Turkey cocks". Other European languages call them literally "India cocks", due to a different import route. So it's a bit silly to change the official name of your country because a bird is named after it.
> Other European languages call them literally "India cocks"
Haha in Turkey (Türkiye) turkey is hindi and India is Hindistan, which can be translated as Turkeyland.
Haha in Turkey (Türkiye) turkey is hindi and India is Hindistan, which can be translated as Turkeyland.
Oh, that's new information to me. Now I can not wait for Japan to finally change its name (perhaps to Nippon?) to avoid the terrible and vulgar connotation with the Japanese tit..
> Other European languages call them literally "India cocks", due to a different import route.
Hence “dinde” in French.
Hence “dinde” in French.
The UN can pretend that it's English. Just like how it pretends Taiwan isn't a country. There's no reason why we should go along with it.
> Just like how it pretends Taiwan isn't a country
That's because it really isn't. It really should be, but a) they don't really claim to be one (until recently they officially claimed they're the "one and only" China, same as the PRC) and according to polls most people there support that status quo; b) nobody of note recognises them to be.. anything really. As far as most of the world, including the UN, are concerned, Taiwan is the losers of the Chinese Civil war that have some limited exceptions (like performing at Olympics). Contrast this with Kosovo who claim to be an independent country and are somewhat recognised.
That's because it really isn't. It really should be, but a) they don't really claim to be one (until recently they officially claimed they're the "one and only" China, same as the PRC) and according to polls most people there support that status quo; b) nobody of note recognises them to be.. anything really. As far as most of the world, including the UN, are concerned, Taiwan is the losers of the Chinese Civil war that have some limited exceptions (like performing at Olympics). Contrast this with Kosovo who claim to be an independent country and are somewhat recognised.
> That's because it really isn't.
What's a "country"? You are talking about "sovereign state"–whether or not Taiwan counts as one, or could, depends on which theory of statehood one supports (constitutive or declarative)–but something can be a "country" without being a sovereign state. The ISO 3166-1 list is officially of countries and "dependent territories", but many people talk of those "dependent territories" (especially the more major ones) as "countries". And then people commonly speak of the constituent countries of the UK (England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales) as "countries" – seems particularly common in British English (and more British-influenced English varieties), but one even hears Americans speak of them in that way at times. Fewer people know this, but the Kingdom of the Netherlands is divided into four constituent countries as well (the Netherlands proper – which includes both the European part and the Caribbean islands of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, Saba; Aruba; Curaçao; and Sint Maarten). Similarly, the Kingdom of Denmark is also divided into three countries – Denmark proper, the Faroe Islands, and Greenland. And one of France's overseas territories, French Polynesia, is officially classified under French law as an "overseas country" of France. Canada officially recognises Quebec, not as a "country", but as a "nation" (a term which is often used interchangeably with "country").
> Contrast this with Kosovo who claim to be an independent country and are somewhat recognised.
Kosovo is recognised by about 50% of the world's states, including all of the G7 states. They've also been accepted as members of several intergovernmental organisations, including the World Bank and IMF. And yet, unlike Taiwan, ISO still won't give them an official country code - ISO gives the reason that they won't give them a code until the UN Statistical Division gives them a code, and I guess the UN Statistical Division sees it as a political hot potato they don't want to touch.
What's a "country"? You are talking about "sovereign state"–whether or not Taiwan counts as one, or could, depends on which theory of statehood one supports (constitutive or declarative)–but something can be a "country" without being a sovereign state. The ISO 3166-1 list is officially of countries and "dependent territories", but many people talk of those "dependent territories" (especially the more major ones) as "countries". And then people commonly speak of the constituent countries of the UK (England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales) as "countries" – seems particularly common in British English (and more British-influenced English varieties), but one even hears Americans speak of them in that way at times. Fewer people know this, but the Kingdom of the Netherlands is divided into four constituent countries as well (the Netherlands proper – which includes both the European part and the Caribbean islands of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, Saba; Aruba; Curaçao; and Sint Maarten). Similarly, the Kingdom of Denmark is also divided into three countries – Denmark proper, the Faroe Islands, and Greenland. And one of France's overseas territories, French Polynesia, is officially classified under French law as an "overseas country" of France. Canada officially recognises Quebec, not as a "country", but as a "nation" (a term which is often used interchangeably with "country").
> Contrast this with Kosovo who claim to be an independent country and are somewhat recognised.
Kosovo is recognised by about 50% of the world's states, including all of the G7 states. They've also been accepted as members of several intergovernmental organisations, including the World Bank and IMF. And yet, unlike Taiwan, ISO still won't give them an official country code - ISO gives the reason that they won't give them a code until the UN Statistical Division gives them a code, and I guess the UN Statistical Division sees it as a political hot potato they don't want to touch.
Exactly. It's politics, which can take a completely new direction on a whim of a dictator or a regime change. But language, as used in practice, changes much less rapidly.
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Yeah, it's strange and short-sighted (to me) that this kind of reasoning drives language changes. You really should want and treasure having an ages-weathered or weird exonym in the target language, preferably going back to Middle Ages or something. This suggests (on the perception level, that's what we're talking about) that you are a serious and established entity and your relations with the world go way, way back.
Look up England, Germany (and maybe Holy See) here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_country_names_in_vario... At least Slavic names for Germany even have negative undertones (something like 'mute people'). With changing the name you are trashing all that, and it's doubtful that it really changes much in the perception by itself.
Look up England, Germany (and maybe Holy See) here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_country_names_in_vario... At least Slavic names for Germany even have negative undertones (something like 'mute people'). With changing the name you are trashing all that, and it's doubtful that it really changes much in the perception by itself.
>Practically, yes, but Turkey is a sovereign country and it can ask the UN to call it in English whatever it likes.
Can China ask for it to be called 中国?
Can China ask for it to be called 中国?
The UN maintains a list of official country names in six languages (English, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Arabic) [1], and UN representatives of the countries can request how they want their country to be written in any of those.
I guess China could request to be called 中国 in English communication in the UN and/or ISO (if I understand your question correctly). The main issue is that if you put up to much friction for other language speakers, they're just going to ignore you/the official standards and do whatever they want, so it becomes a bit self-defeating. I expect this to happen to Turkey as well: English speakers will probably mostly keep using "Turkey" rather than "Türkiye" indefinitely, except in cases where ISO/UN standard are really required.
[1] https://unstats.un.org/unsd/geoinfo/ungegn/docs/11th-uncsgn-...
I guess China could request to be called 中国 in English communication in the UN and/or ISO (if I understand your question correctly). The main issue is that if you put up to much friction for other language speakers, they're just going to ignore you/the official standards and do whatever they want, so it becomes a bit self-defeating. I expect this to happen to Turkey as well: English speakers will probably mostly keep using "Turkey" rather than "Türkiye" indefinitely, except in cases where ISO/UN standard are really required.
[1] https://unstats.un.org/unsd/geoinfo/ungegn/docs/11th-uncsgn-...
Maybe they're trying to cut down the number of labels that say:
"Fabrique en Dinde"
"Fabrique en Dinde"
I'm assuming you're knowingly joking, so for others: 'dinde' is the contraction of French d'Inde, shortened from coq d'Inde or poule d'Inde. So you go to the store and buy some dinde for your sandwich. Fabrique en dinde would mean something is made of turkey (the bird).
Türkiye was, and I presume still in, Turquie in French. So made in Türkiye is Fabriqie en Turquie.
Türkiye was, and I presume still in, Turquie in French. So made in Türkiye is Fabriqie en Turquie.
Uh? No, I think the point is that labels "Made in Turkey" ran the risk of being lazily translated to "Fabriqué en Dinde" in French by a misconfigured automatic translation software and you no longer have this problem if you use words spelt differently for the bird and the country. Nothing to do with "d'Inde".
Yep. That comment came remembering the pointing and laughing and explaining it to the kids.
I do tend to check the labels, sometimes there are jokes hidden there.
For example, a computer bag I have from during the Bush Administration has a label with the text:
Ne pas secher a la machiene Ne pas repasser Nous sommes desoles que notre president soit un idiot. Nous n'avons pa vote pour lui.
I do tend to check the labels, sometimes there are jokes hidden there.
For example, a computer bag I have from during the Bush Administration has a label with the text:
Ne pas secher a la machiene Ne pas repasser Nous sommes desoles que notre president soit un idiot. Nous n'avons pa vote pour lui.
For those who don't speak French, last two sentences are:
We are sorry that our president is an idiot. We didn't vote for him.
http://www.dzof.org/2004/06/nous-sommes-desoles-que-notre.ht...
We are sorry that our president is an idiot. We didn't vote for him.
http://www.dzof.org/2004/06/nous-sommes-desoles-que-notre.ht...
Most people will likely see this only on online forms that lazily just populate their country dropdowns from (pirated copies) of the official ISO database.
https://www.iso.org/iso-3166-country-codes.html
"ISO allows free-of-charge use of its country, currency and language codes from ISO 3166, ISO 4217 and ISO 639, respectively."
Doesn't sound like piracy to me.
"ISO allows free-of-charge use of its country, currency and language codes from ISO 3166, ISO 4217 and ISO 639, respectively."
Doesn't sound like piracy to me.
Yes, but if you actually try to download the collection (link right above that text), you are presented with a form to pay CHF 300 for this data.
Now I am not a copyright lawyer but this is how I understand it: this entire database is a copyrighted work owned by ISO. If you pay them CHF 300 you can download the database and then use use it freely. But when you gather that entire dataset (transformed or not) back to a full database format, it is still a derived work - the copyright of which is owned by ISO.
This is of course completely hair splitting as you will not see ISO coming after anyone spreading the database in any format (it would be a PR disaster). But if you asked the opinion of a corporate lawyer, they might say you technically need to pay ISO before you can use a copy of the entire database in your app. And I bet that's why they have the form to pay the CHF 300 if someone somewhere has a compliance department telling them to be 100% sure they are not breaching any copyrights..
Maybe someone who actually knows anything about copyright law can comment..
EDIT: The situation is indeed unclear as I predicted, probably on purpose. See here https://datahub.io/core/country-list#license :
> It should be noted that this material is ultimately sourced from ISO and their rights and licensing policy is somewhat unclear. As this is a short, simple database of facts there is a strong argument that no rights can subsist in this collection. However, ISO state on their site:
>> ISO makes the list of alpha-2 country codes available for internal use and non-commercial purposes free of charge.
> This carries the implication (though not spelled out) that other uses are not permitted and that, therefore, there may be rights preventing further general use and reuse.
Likewise, if ISO says they allow "free-of-charge use" of the database, it implies their permission and allowance is required to use it in the first place. This implies that if you embed the database to your app, it contains proprietary material by ISO. This limits your rights for example re-licensing it, as you can not re-license without consent from ISO, the copyright holder.
Again - this is only a theoretical problem, yet the ambiguity is rather annoying to a pedant.
Now I am not a copyright lawyer but this is how I understand it: this entire database is a copyrighted work owned by ISO. If you pay them CHF 300 you can download the database and then use use it freely. But when you gather that entire dataset (transformed or not) back to a full database format, it is still a derived work - the copyright of which is owned by ISO.
This is of course completely hair splitting as you will not see ISO coming after anyone spreading the database in any format (it would be a PR disaster). But if you asked the opinion of a corporate lawyer, they might say you technically need to pay ISO before you can use a copy of the entire database in your app. And I bet that's why they have the form to pay the CHF 300 if someone somewhere has a compliance department telling them to be 100% sure they are not breaching any copyrights..
Maybe someone who actually knows anything about copyright law can comment..
EDIT: The situation is indeed unclear as I predicted, probably on purpose. See here https://datahub.io/core/country-list#license :
> It should be noted that this material is ultimately sourced from ISO and their rights and licensing policy is somewhat unclear. As this is a short, simple database of facts there is a strong argument that no rights can subsist in this collection. However, ISO state on their site:
>> ISO makes the list of alpha-2 country codes available for internal use and non-commercial purposes free of charge.
> This carries the implication (though not spelled out) that other uses are not permitted and that, therefore, there may be rights preventing further general use and reuse.
Likewise, if ISO says they allow "free-of-charge use" of the database, it implies their permission and allowance is required to use it in the first place. This implies that if you embed the database to your app, it contains proprietary material by ISO. This limits your rights for example re-licensing it, as you can not re-license without consent from ISO, the copyright holder.
Again - this is only a theoretical problem, yet the ambiguity is rather annoying to a pedant.
Although I'm not a copyright laywer, I did previously work for an intellectual property services company. The country codes collection is a service they provide designed to make it easy to keep country codes up to date. This doesn't negate the "free-of-charge use" of the database. ISO appear to have clarified this almost 20 years ago: http://xml.coverpages.org/ISOReaffirms.html , and it looks like the situation hasn't changed.
I don't see how your rights would be limited by including it in your app. You can just say the copyright to the ISO database belongs to ISO, but is free-of-charge, and the copyright to the code written by you belongs to you, which is not free of charge, or any license you wish.
Edit: Because I can't reply - CC0, a public domain - like license was released in 2009, well after the clarification of their "free-of-charge use" license.
I don't see how your rights would be limited by including it in your app. You can just say the copyright to the ISO database belongs to ISO, but is free-of-charge, and the copyright to the code written by you belongs to you, which is not free of charge, or any license you wish.
Edit: Because I can't reply - CC0, a public domain - like license was released in 2009, well after the clarification of their "free-of-charge use" license.
It would be much better if they simply dedicated this database to the public domain.
In the "clarification" they indeed seem to consider that the database is covered by their copyright, and any free use is subject to their continued benevolence:
> However, ISO and its members do not charge for the use made of the codes contained in these standards, subject to this being consistent with ISO's copyright.
In the "clarification" they indeed seem to consider that the database is covered by their copyright, and any free use is subject to their continued benevolence:
> However, ISO and its members do not charge for the use made of the codes contained in these standards, subject to this being consistent with ISO's copyright.
Use Unicode CLDR data.
License: https://unicode.org/copyright.html
License: https://unicode.org/copyright.html
We're way off in speculation land here, but if CH law is like DE law, IIRC it's one of the countries that releasing to the public domain isn't really possible (which is why CC0 exists)
The specific rules around copyright of facts is probably extremely country specific. The US tends to be on the more liberal/not copyrightable side here than Europe.
Use Unicode CLDR data.
https://cldr.unicode.org/
https://cldr.unicode.org/
I presume that might be rejected on the grounds that it is a completely different writing system. But my point is that even if it was accepted, the true common name of China in practical English would still not change. Or did you know there already officially exists countries such as Czechia and The Holy See - much better known in English as The Czech Republic and The Vatican respectively?
Pedantically, the Holy See[1] is the Pope's jurisdiction, which includes his universal ecclesiastical jurisdiction in addition to territorial control of a sovereign state. This state[2], per the treaty establishing it[3], is properly referred to as "Vatican City State" (Stato della Città del Vaticano).
This is understandably confused by the fact that it is the Holy See, not Vatican City State, that maintains foreign relations and participates in international organizations like the UN.
This, I assume, is why the official ISO name associated with country code VA was at some point changed from "Vatican City State (Holy See)" to "Holy See (the)"[4].
Interestingly, both entities issue passports[5].
[1] https://www.vatican.va/
[2] https://www.vaticanstate.va/
[3] https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/secretariat_state/archivi...
[4] https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:code:3166:VA
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_and_Holy_See_passports
This is understandably confused by the fact that it is the Holy See, not Vatican City State, that maintains foreign relations and participates in international organizations like the UN.
This, I assume, is why the official ISO name associated with country code VA was at some point changed from "Vatican City State (Holy See)" to "Holy See (the)"[4].
Interestingly, both entities issue passports[5].
[1] https://www.vatican.va/
[2] https://www.vaticanstate.va/
[3] https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/secretariat_state/archivi...
[4] https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:code:3166:VA
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_and_Holy_See_passports
And a literal translation of that would be "Middle Kingdom." So if the Middle Kingdom wants to call itself "Middle Kingdom," why not?
> One of the stated reasons is that Turkey is homophonic with 'turkey'
I would not even know how to pronounce “Türkiye”, even if I were willing to.
I would not even know how to pronounce “Türkiye”, even if I were willing to.
Wait, I thought Türkiye is homophone with Turkey? Did you mean Turkey being homograph with turkey (same spelling different meaning). Or is there a pronunciation change I've missed?
I meant that Turkey and turkey are homophones. Apart from the capitilization they are also homographs.
Turkey and Türkiye are not homophonic. The BBC article I linked has a pronunication guide towards the end: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61671913
Turkey and Türkiye are not homophonic. The BBC article I linked has a pronunication guide towards the end: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61671913
Isn't the new name pronounced like turkey-ay? I'm fairly sure I heard it said that way on some news segment about it.
I work with a Turkish woman, and she gave us the rundown of pronunciation. Bref, it's pronounced "turkey-ay."
That's in Turkish though. In English the 'e' at the end of 'Turkiye' could either be silent, as in code and eye, or it could be pronounced as in Kanye. It's likely that both pronunciations will be used, similarly to Porsche and Nike.
Considering that the pronunciation of 'Turkiye' with a silent e is almost identical to the standard pronunciation of 'Turkey', I suspect this will be the primary pronunciation in English and will win out over the "Kanye" pronunciation. This would make 'Turkiye' a purely orthographic change and not a linguistic one.
Considering that the pronunciation of 'Turkiye' with a silent e is almost identical to the standard pronunciation of 'Turkey', I suspect this will be the primary pronunciation in English and will win out over the "Kanye" pronunciation. This would make 'Turkiye' a purely orthographic change and not a linguistic one.
Fair, so let me clarify: the pronunciation has always been 'turkey-ay', and most other cultures/languages pronounce it correctly (by which I mean in-line with how native Turks pronounce it). English is an outlier.
On the whole, English tends to be far more accepting of foreign spellings and pronunciations than any other language.
The idea that the "correct" spelling and pronunciation for a loanword is that of the source language is very much a quirk of English.
Most languages try to either change the spelling of a new loanword to match how it is pronounced, or vice versa. English tries to keep both and that's why English spelling is such a mess, because there is French orthography, Germany orthography, Greek orthography, etc, all mixed together and the only way to know how to spell a word is to know its etymology.
Imagine telling the French that the Turkish government gets how to decide how the word "Turquie" is spelled in French, rather than the Académie Française. They would die laughing.
The idea that the "correct" spelling and pronunciation for a loanword is that of the source language is very much a quirk of English.
Most languages try to either change the spelling of a new loanword to match how it is pronounced, or vice versa. English tries to keep both and that's why English spelling is such a mess, because there is French orthography, Germany orthography, Greek orthography, etc, all mixed together and the only way to know how to spell a word is to know its etymology.
Imagine telling the French that the Turkish government gets how to decide how the word "Turquie" is spelled in French, rather than the Académie Française. They would die laughing.
I wonder if Georgia should ask to be called Sakartvelo (which is how it's called in Georgian language), just to stop those "the country, not the state" clarifications when talking to US people.
This is a naïve take which I find über annoying. Maybe I'll tell my local café owner, Emily Brontë, about it.
I get your point, but the fact is these (except maybe for Brontë) commonly get spelled without the diacritics.
That doesn't mean spelling them with the diacritics makes them not English.
French was the official language of England for quite some time so English and French have a special relationship, and any of the French diacritics are acceptable in English. English also has native use of the umlaut mark for as diaeresis e.g. coördinate.
For non-French diacritics, it is on a case-by-case basis. Most English speakers would accept ñ and even write it e.g "El Niño event". Nordic ø is questionable but would be accepted in place names. Phở is right out.
For non-French diacritics, it is on a case-by-case basis. Most English speakers would accept ñ and even write it e.g "El Niño event". Nordic ø is questionable but would be accepted in place names. Phở is right out.
> Most English speakers would accept ñ and even write it e.g "El Niño event"
FWIW this may be true in the USA but in the UK and other non-NA English-speaking countries I don't think this holds.
FWIW this may be true in the USA but in the UK and other non-NA English-speaking countries I don't think this holds.
You will definitely see jalapeños and such on UK food packaging. I just searched the bbc website for "jalapeño" and found this page [0] which uses both spellings (!). It also links to a page on "habañero" (sic) so yeah you can say that British familiarity with Ñ is somewhat of a mixed bag.
[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/jalapeno_chilli
[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/jalapeno_chilli
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It's the name that the country uses in its official communications in English, and expresses the desire to see the same name in English communications addressed to it.
They’re essentially throwing an identity tantrum on a global scale, while tip-toeing towards nationalism internally.
This would be a laughable matter, were it not a sign of what’s coming.
This would be a laughable matter, were it not a sign of what’s coming.
In a world where we are asked to refer to people by their chosen names and pronouns rather than what they were asigned in the past, why should we not refer to a country by its chosen name? Especially if it's going through the proper channels to promulgate its name change?
Ignoring the political implications of the question for a second, if nothing else when people ask to be referred to by a different name, their chosen name is usually at least reproducible on the keyboards in common use. Most people in the US would have absolutely no idea how to type Ü, let alone İ. In addition, English speakers don't have [y], [c], or word-final [e] in their phoneme inventory.
Yeah, I fully expect people without easy access to u with umlaut to just write u (regardless of case), and those without easy access to capital dotted i, to just write a dotless capital I. And the pronunciation will be brutal, at least for the first few decades, but change is a process.
So being forced to call anyone by what they prefer is cool and encouraged, except when it comes to a country?
It has a umlaut and a dotted i in the uppercase version. Totally metal.
I encourage you to not read much from the New Yorker then!
It’s a name, how can you tell if a name is “in English”?
Official? Sure. Actual, in the English language name? No.
I mean there's the official name, which has a canonical standard value and we can answer with an easy "yes" or "no."
And then there's this fuzzy "actual English language" question about, which is pretty hard to answer, and verges on philosophical "what even is a language/what is a name?" wankery. I can't see how you give a simple yes/no answer to that.
And then there's this fuzzy "actual English language" question about, which is pretty hard to answer, and verges on philosophical "what even is a language/what is a name?" wankery. I can't see how you give a simple yes/no answer to that.
> I can't see how you give a simple yes/no answer to that.
I'm looking into my crystal ball and seeing the ~0 people who will be able to remember the slightly different and alien-looking-to-English spelling, and the even smaller value of ~0 who will ever be bothered to use the umlaut.
I'm looking into my crystal ball and seeing the ~0 people who will be able to remember the slightly different and alien-looking-to-English spelling, and the even smaller value of ~0 who will ever be bothered to use the umlaut.
If language is just decided by popular vote, somebody should tell the English that they are using English wrong -- there are many more Americans after all.
Well—that's exactly the case, and that's why you see different usage guides and dictionaries for American English and British English. "Correct" usage, for values of correct that favor clarity for a given audience, does indeed differ substantially between American and British English, among many other variants and dialects.
What has minimal effect is some international standards body trying to dictate usage. Today, and likely for a long time to come, if not indefinitely, "Turkey" is less distracting or confusing to practically any English-speaking audience one might choose, than the new thing. The new one's odd-enough looking (again, even just considering the letter order) and the old one enough entrenched that I expect the old form to be the better choice for communication in English for a long time.
What has minimal effect is some international standards body trying to dictate usage. Today, and likely for a long time to come, if not indefinitely, "Turkey" is less distracting or confusing to practically any English-speaking audience one might choose, than the new thing. The new one's odd-enough looking (again, even just considering the letter order) and the old one enough entrenched that I expect the old form to be the better choice for communication in English for a long time.
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They probably defer to the UNGEGN[0] which allows countries to submit the official name of their country in various languages. Turkey recently requested to change their official English name[1].
[0] https://unstats.un.org/unsd/ungegn/working_groups/wg1.cshtml
[1] https://turkiye.un.org/en/184798-turkeys-name-changed-turkiy...
[0] https://unstats.un.org/unsd/ungegn/working_groups/wg1.cshtml
[1] https://turkiye.un.org/en/184798-turkeys-name-changed-turkiy...
In a way it's understandable that people like seeing their country called in their own language. But isn't that actually more a sign of irrelevance than a sign of status? A village does not have a toponym in any other language, but famous cities tend to have, and those who don't might be a bit short on history.
How about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Germany ? (yes, we consider ourselves lucky that noone calls the country by what it's most famous for)
How about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Germany ? (yes, we consider ourselves lucky that noone calls the country by what it's most famous for)
It's true that the older and more famous a placename, the more likely it is to have different forms in neighboring languages. All languages evolve phonetically, and during the course of this evolution, the pronunciation of all words changes (independently in every language), including (especially) toponyms which were borrowed 500-1000 years ago. It's a sad misconception that if a toponym is pronounced differently, then it means it's "butchered". I think it's part of our common history and it should be embraced, not erased.
Yeah, the truly interesting part is where you make the cutoff in regions where borders shifted. Straßburg instead of Strasbourg hopefully doesn't get perceived as a claim to the place and neither should Danzig, but I'd rather write Kaliningrad because those people are so damn thin-skinned, bordering on paranoia (they might even feel threatened by the letters Sank Petersburg, even if that can't possibly mean anything other than respect). But random villages that used to have a name in a language that isn't spoken there anymore? Hands off, unless you desperately want to sound "that way" (you shouldn't!). In an explicitly historical context, you should at least acknowledge the current name.
>but I'd rather write Kaliningrad because those people are so damn thin-skinned, bordering on paranoia
In Kaliningrad, the locals colloquially call their city Koenig (short for Koenigsberg), they're totally fine with it. Although, the context matters, of course.
In Kaliningrad, the locals colloquially call their city Koenig (short for Koenigsberg), they're totally fine with it. Although, the context matters, of course.
Nice to hear that, I guess it shouldn't be surprising that people who actually live there might be less concerned about a hypothetical reclaim than people hundreds of kilometers away. If you only know it from the map (well, that's also me) that's a what-if not rooted in reality one way or the other at all.
I imagine most people in Königsburg would much rather be part of Deutschland than Россия though.
It is a sign of dictatorship. Just like in the video The Dictator.
You're right. Having country names in English is mostly irrelevant.
I just learned that Greece is called Yunanistan in Turkey.
And as long as the English speaking world still butchers German town names (Hanover, Hamelin, Nuremberg instead of Hannover, Hameln, Nürnberg) I think it is legit to call the country Turkey.
And as long as the English speaking world still butchers German town names (Hanover, Hamelin, Nuremberg instead of Hannover, Hameln, Nürnberg) I think it is legit to call the country Turkey.
The whole Middle East has called it some variation of Yunan (Yunanistan specifically meaning "Land of the Yunan") for about 3000 years. It derives from Ionian[0] and roughly specified the land Ionia[1] region and the name is baked into everything (modern and historical) from Hebrew to Persian to Arabic to Assyrian.
On the back of this, though, in many countries in the Middle East the Latin names are used for most countries in Europe, including Germany, which is referred to as Alemaan (from proto-Germanic Alemanniz[2]).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionians
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionia
[2] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Alemanni
On the back of this, though, in many countries in the Middle East the Latin names are used for most countries in Europe, including Germany, which is referred to as Alemaan (from proto-Germanic Alemanniz[2]).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionians
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionia
[2] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Alemanni
The region that's now called "Iran" was called Persia by the West for at least 2000 years, until the Shah of Iran requested the world to refer to the country as "Iran", which is the term used by the Iranians.
Fun fact: "Iran" means "the land of the Aryans".
Fun fact: "Iran" means "the land of the Aryans".
As a German I'm fine with Alemaan (note that the German name for Germany is nothing like Germany either).
But it's worth noting that in German "Alman" has become the equivalent of "gammon" in the UK, especially among immigrants and in youth culture. I.e. a derogatory slur for a specific type of native-born person (usually men) holding naïvely reactionary views. Not necessarily intentionally racist but always ignorant.
But it's worth noting that in German "Alman" has become the equivalent of "gammon" in the UK, especially among immigrants and in youth culture. I.e. a derogatory slur for a specific type of native-born person (usually men) holding naïvely reactionary views. Not necessarily intentionally racist but always ignorant.
> The whole Middle East has called it some variation of Yunan (Yunanistan specifically meaning "Land of the Yunan") for about 3000 years. It derives from Ionian
> the name is baked into everything (modern and historical) from Hebrew to Persian to Arabic to Assyrian.
The term is also used in Han China for the Greek kingdom that came to exist near them. There would have been no real awareness of the original region of Ionia, though there was rudimentary awareness of the Roman Empire a bit later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dayuan
> the name is baked into everything (modern and historical) from Hebrew to Persian to Arabic to Assyrian.
The term is also used in Han China for the Greek kingdom that came to exist near them. There would have been no real awareness of the original region of Ionia, though there was rudimentary awareness of the Roman Empire a bit later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dayuan
I wonder whether that applies to Yunnan as well. It is the most westerly high population province of China.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yunnan#Etymology
This suggests that the reason for the name isn't really known, but no one thinks it might refer to the Greeks.
This suggests that the reason for the name isn't really known, but no one thinks it might refer to the Greeks.
I also find it odd to think differing names of places in a foreign language as butchering. I like how München (Munich) is called Monaco in Italian.
But if we do think it's butchering, why don't we refer to Germans as Deutsche in English, call the country Deutschland instead of Germany?
But if we do think it's butchering, why don't we refer to Germans as Deutsche in English, call the country Deutschland instead of Germany?
> why don't we refer to Germans as Deutsche in English, call the country Deutschland instead of Germany?
Because the Germans aren’t throwing a fit about how other countries are addressing them in their languages, while the Turks currently are.
Given how Turkey currently has insane inflation and internal political turmoil with Erdogan’s opposition rising, there’s a line of thought that has war as the only way to maintain power for Erdogan, much like how a coup solidified his power in 2016.
Turkey’s neighbors probably should start feeling like Ukraine before February, or like Poland before September 1939.
Because the Germans aren’t throwing a fit about how other countries are addressing them in their languages, while the Turks currently are.
Given how Turkey currently has insane inflation and internal political turmoil with Erdogan’s opposition rising, there’s a line of thought that has war as the only way to maintain power for Erdogan, much like how a coup solidified his power in 2016.
Turkey’s neighbors probably should start feeling like Ukraine before February, or like Poland before September 1939.
Some other fun country butcherings: Magyarország, Hrvatska, Suomi, Ellada. For which the English names are the oh-so-obvious Hungary, Croatia, Finland, and Greece. I haven't even left Europe yet!
Interesting! In Greek Munich is also Μόναχο (Monacho/Monaco).
Forget towns. Talk about the fucking name of the country.
Actually, the name is "Deutschland" (if you leave out the political decorations declaring it a federal republic).
One should think, knowing where the word comes from, that the english name would be "Dutchland". But it isn't, instead they call someone else "Dutch". Admittedly a neighbouring country with some shared history and origins waaay back then, but still. Tyskland is great, thanks to everyone using a variation of that.
Then there is "Germany". Way back then, when the romans tried and failed to establish a longterm presence on the other side of the rivers rhine and danube that might have been ok, but that was 2000 years ago. For at least the last 500 years, "deutsch" or some variation thereof was official. Germans are also only part of the historic inhabitants of what forms modern-day Germany, there are also a few Slavic tribes in there. Also, there are many German tribes that didn't settle in what is modern-day Germany, instead they now form the nordic states, the Netherlands, parts of Switzerland and Austria. So mostly wrong, no fish.
Alemania is even more wrong, because that actually only talks about the southwestern german tribes, in current southwest Germany and northeastern Switzerland. "Alemannisch" strictly only describes the traditions of that region in german. Nothing else.
Then there is Niemcy and stuff. I've been told it means something like "mutes" or "the ones you cannot comprehend". I'm not sure if that is supposed to be an insult or a compliment, but really, after you started talking to us you couldn't be arsed to ask what we call ourselves?
Talking about insults: Saksa might be considered a compliment or an insult in Germany, depending on where you are. Historically, saxon tribes settled in the northwest (later England, but that is not relevant here). This corresponds to a part of what currently is the German land Niedersachsen. There are two Länder that are called something with "sachsen", but they are faking it to get a grab at the former glory. Talking about "glory", it is quite the opposite in southern Germany, there nobody likes "Sachsen" and considers them the worst kind of "Preussen". Which are all considered insults there.
There are a few others, getting more and more weird until: Navajo: Béésh Bich’ahii Bikéyah ("Metal Cap-wearer Land"), in reference to Stahlhelm-wearing German soldiers.[1] I can get behind that. But the rest, please stop it, it is "Deutschland". Or I might have to wear my metal cap again ;)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Germany
Actually, the name is "Deutschland" (if you leave out the political decorations declaring it a federal republic).
One should think, knowing where the word comes from, that the english name would be "Dutchland". But it isn't, instead they call someone else "Dutch". Admittedly a neighbouring country with some shared history and origins waaay back then, but still. Tyskland is great, thanks to everyone using a variation of that.
Then there is "Germany". Way back then, when the romans tried and failed to establish a longterm presence on the other side of the rivers rhine and danube that might have been ok, but that was 2000 years ago. For at least the last 500 years, "deutsch" or some variation thereof was official. Germans are also only part of the historic inhabitants of what forms modern-day Germany, there are also a few Slavic tribes in there. Also, there are many German tribes that didn't settle in what is modern-day Germany, instead they now form the nordic states, the Netherlands, parts of Switzerland and Austria. So mostly wrong, no fish.
Alemania is even more wrong, because that actually only talks about the southwestern german tribes, in current southwest Germany and northeastern Switzerland. "Alemannisch" strictly only describes the traditions of that region in german. Nothing else.
Then there is Niemcy and stuff. I've been told it means something like "mutes" or "the ones you cannot comprehend". I'm not sure if that is supposed to be an insult or a compliment, but really, after you started talking to us you couldn't be arsed to ask what we call ourselves?
Talking about insults: Saksa might be considered a compliment or an insult in Germany, depending on where you are. Historically, saxon tribes settled in the northwest (later England, but that is not relevant here). This corresponds to a part of what currently is the German land Niedersachsen. There are two Länder that are called something with "sachsen", but they are faking it to get a grab at the former glory. Talking about "glory", it is quite the opposite in southern Germany, there nobody likes "Sachsen" and considers them the worst kind of "Preussen". Which are all considered insults there.
There are a few others, getting more and more weird until: Navajo: Béésh Bich’ahii Bikéyah ("Metal Cap-wearer Land"), in reference to Stahlhelm-wearing German soldiers.[1] I can get behind that. But the rest, please stop it, it is "Deutschland". Or I might have to wear my metal cap again ;)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Germany
>Then there is Niemcy and stuff. I've been told it means something like "mutes" or "the ones you cannot comprehend". I'm not sure if that is supposed to be an insult or a compliment, but really, after you started talking to us you couldn't be arsed to ask what we call ourselves?
It was a common name for all foreigners, not just Germans. During a certain era, German traders were the most common foreigners in Slavic lands, so the name stuck with Germans.
It was a common name for all foreigners, not just Germans. During a certain era, German traders were the most common foreigners in Slavic lands, so the name stuck with Germans.
I love how it's a similar origin story to the word 'Barbarian' - deriving from anyone who wasn't Greek, and so whose language sounded like "baa-baa baa-baa"
Yes, and Finns don't call their country "Finland" — Finnish language, after all, doesn't uses "f" natively — they call it "Suomi" and they call Russia "Venäjä" (even though Wends really don't have much to do with it). So what? Names are arbitrary, especially names in different languages, that's just how they are.
As the Russian proverb says, "you can call me even 'kettle', just don't put me on the stove".
As the Russian proverb says, "you can call me even 'kettle', just don't put me on the stove".
The first prize goes to the French, though.
They call their country France, named after the Germanic tribe of the Franks. Only in Asterix they remember that their country should be called Gaul.
They call their country France, named after the Germanic tribe of the Franks. Only in Asterix they remember that their country should be called Gaul.
The Germanic tribe who invaded and conquered the lands currently known as France, forming (at least) the aristocracy and then naming it after themselves? Isn't that a reasonable name for the country? I mean, it also happened in England (i.e. land of the Angles) - which historically would have been Britannia when France was Gaul.
> They call their country France, named after the Germanic tribe of the Franks.
You mean, the Germans who call it “Frankreich”?
There were several Frankish tribes, who occupied over the years regions from Thuringia all the way to Gascony. You might have heard of Clovis, king of the Franks, baptised at Reims and who made Paris the capital of his kingdom, and founded the Frankish Merovingian dynasty that ruled almost all of what is France now for 2 centuries. Gauls had been heavily romanised well before that point anyway.
You should probably read a bit in a subject before trying to be clever.
You mean, the Germans who call it “Frankreich”?
There were several Frankish tribes, who occupied over the years regions from Thuringia all the way to Gascony. You might have heard of Clovis, king of the Franks, baptised at Reims and who made Paris the capital of his kingdom, and founded the Frankish Merovingian dynasty that ruled almost all of what is France now for 2 centuries. Gauls had been heavily romanised well before that point anyway.
You should probably read a bit in a subject before trying to be clever.
Eh. The name "Bulgaria" derives from Bulgars, who were a nomadic Turkic tribe from areas around the Caspian Sea that came to conquer the country.
For another example, the name "Russia" is derived from "Rus", which itself appears to be a derivative of the Norse "Ruslaw" - again, because it was the Norse who came, conquered, and became the ruling elite.
Basically, it happened all the time.
For another example, the name "Russia" is derived from "Rus", which itself appears to be a derivative of the Norse "Ruslaw" - again, because it was the Norse who came, conquered, and became the ruling elite.
Basically, it happened all the time.
> There are two Länder that are called something with "sachsen", but they are faking it to get a grab at the former glory.
Let me guess: the one of the three Länder that are called something with "sachsen" that you forget is Niedersachsen, even despite spelling it out literally one word before that sentence! Being born in the only saxon capital of the of the country I was born in I've made a habit out of confusing saxons from the east by claiming that I'm one of them, never gets old.
(yeah, and I was close to posting that wiki link myself, so happy that nobody has started referring to the country by what it's most famous for)
Let me guess: the one of the three Länder that are called something with "sachsen" that you forget is Niedersachsen, even despite spelling it out literally one word before that sentence! Being born in the only saxon capital of the of the country I was born in I've made a habit out of confusing saxons from the east by claiming that I'm one of them, never gets old.
(yeah, and I was close to posting that wiki link myself, so happy that nobody has started referring to the country by what it's most famous for)
I'd strongly prefer is this 'butchering' would be happening only in cases the original name is literally un-pronounciable in given language.
But no, everybody must be pissing on their little sandbox - Neuchatel has to be Neuburg, although both are perfectly pronounciable in both languages. US has to be États-Unis. Practically every effin' language has this.
I'd say using original names and how they sound shows some proper respect towards given place, country, people, culture and its history. Shows you actually make some effort, and also shows having some class. But I can only wish this was a widespread opinion.
But no, everybody must be pissing on their little sandbox - Neuchatel has to be Neuburg, although both are perfectly pronounciable in both languages. US has to be États-Unis. Practically every effin' language has this.
I'd say using original names and how they sound shows some proper respect towards given place, country, people, culture and its history. Shows you actually make some effort, and also shows having some class. But I can only wish this was a widespread opinion.
For the record, I'm fairly sure how to pronounce Neuburg but much less confident I'd get Neuchatel correct.
Especially when the circumflex has been left out so you have no reminder of how used to be written and pronounced.
États-Unis is quite respectful as it literally describes how the country wants to be considered: United States. It is only if you don’t find the term meaningful that way you would want someone to uncomprehendingly parrot the sounds.
États-Unis is quite respectful as it literally describes how the country wants to be considered: United States. It is only if you don’t find the term meaningful that way you would want someone to uncomprehendingly parrot the sounds.
In Hebrew, India is called Hodu, which seems to be a name unique to Hebrew (although with quite ancient origins).
Also Hindistan (Land of the Hindi) means India, and "hindi" means turkey, in Turkish. Mısır also means corn and also Egypt in the same language.
Yup. It's pretty ignorant to call India the land of turkeys,while throwing a fit when other countries call yours Turkey.
Maybe the bird will be also called türkiye now.
And the actual bird, in Iranian Farsi, is a "booghoolamoo", which is roughly the same idea as the gobbling noise a turkey makes.
In Afghan Farsi (Dari) the bird is a "feel murgh" which translates as Elephant Chicken.
In Afghan Farsi (Dari) the bird is a "feel murgh" which translates as Elephant Chicken.
Hanover instead of Hannover is "butchering" to you?
An absolute carnage!!
Yes, username smmt8, it is.
Would you campaign for it to be written as Hannofer in English so that non-German speakers will not butcher the current pronunciation.
Obviously there are long historical reasons for language diffs of city names and I imagine many predates the nation states who now house those cities. Changes in local pronunciation is also a thing, and those changes are of course not always propagated to other languages
That's not butchering, it means that the places you list have been sufficiently relevant to speakers of the language in question at the time spelling stabilized to have their own name. The phrase "Mailand oder Madrid" isn't famous for it not being "Milano oder Madrid".
And the actual name for Greece is Hellas.
> And the actual name for Greece is Hellas.
That's many centuries out of date. You want Ellas. The aspiration was lost long ago.
(We might also note that the Greek wikipedia page is titled Ellaða, but the first thing it does is list Ellas as an alternate name.)
That's many centuries out of date. You want Ellas. The aspiration was lost long ago.
(We might also note that the Greek wikipedia page is titled Ellaða, but the first thing it does is list Ellas as an alternate name.)
They didn't always call themselves Hellenes, at one point the more common names were Achaeans (hence Egyptian "Ekwesh"), Danaans and Argives. The word "Hellenes" is only found once in Homer. Or often people called them by their specific tribe, such as Ionians or Dorians. Some languages use older names because that's what they are used to. It seems that country borders, politics, self-identity etc. change faster than language.
You're right in that the term Hellenes appears later, however it is worth noting that there was still some sense of collective identity, even that far back, as evidenced by the tribes coming together when facing external threats (e.g. the Persians, or even against Troy in the Iliad), common language, culture, competitions that everyone participated in, etc. etc.
It's a curious tug of war. Of course every language is allowed to have its own words. Global use of English puts a special pressure on English.
> English speaking world still butchers German town names
Try Czech: Cáchy, Trevír, Řezno vs Aachen, Trier, Regensburg.
Try Czech: Cáchy, Trevír, Řezno vs Aachen, Trier, Regensburg.
Sometimes that can get political. If you want to start a flamewar in a group including both Germans and Poles, ask them if it's "Danzig" or "Gdansk".
(Or just look at the Wikipedia talk page archives for the city.)
(Or just look at the Wikipedia talk page archives for the city.)
Fortunately the 2 and 3 letter abbreviations (Alpha-2 and Alpha-3) didn't change. Typically we'd use the abbreviations for analysis, feature encoding, etc. and the full name only for display and human interface use (like for autocompletion), where most people will probably be more comfortable with and continue to use the old names for a while.
In EU communications (including statistics), Greece is referred to by the "EL" abbreviation, instead of ISO Alpha-2 code "GR" (as all other countries are). It confused me a few days ago.
I wonder if the oddity here is really the ISO alpha-2: Spain and Germany get abbreviations based on their native-language names, but not Greece.
But the standard 2-letter code for the Greek language is "el."
Obviously there are many other countries with abbreviations based on English and there's some decision-making related to avoiding conflicts, but it is a little odd. My first guess would be that the ISO country code logic went something like: prefer native names, if they use the Latin alphabet.
But the standard 2-letter code for the Greek language is "el."
Obviously there are many other countries with abbreviations based on English and there's some decision-making related to avoiding conflicts, but it is a little odd. My first guess would be that the ISO country code logic went something like: prefer native names, if they use the Latin alphabet.
Are you sure its not in reference to "Greek" the language, rather than "Greece" the country? "el" is coding for Greek in ISO 639, IANA language subtags, etc.
It does seem to be EL for the country. See, for example: https://publications.europa.eu/code/pdf/370000en.htm
EDIT: Perhaps it would have been nice if ISO 639 and ISO 3166 had been better coordinated so we didn't have cs_CZ, da_DK, sv_SE, ...
EDIT: Perhaps it would have been nice if ISO 639 and ISO 3166 had been better coordinated so we didn't have cs_CZ, da_DK, sv_SE, ...
"GB" vs "uk"
Isn't the difference that UK includes Northern Ireland? So it's more of a difference than just using a different word for the same thing.
Great Britain is the largest island in the British Isles. There are quite a few[1] smaller ones. Great Britain contains parts of England, Scotland, and Wales. The isle of Ireland is the second largest (and second most populous) and contains parts of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (the UK) contains the countries England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The British Isles also contain the Isle of Man, Gurnsey, and Jersey which are not part of any of the countries in the UK, but are instead Crown Dependencies[2]. Those are neither sovereign states nor members of the UK.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_of_the_British... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Dependencies
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_of_the_British... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Dependencies
Indeed, Great Britain is the island containing England, Wales, and Scotland, and the UK is Great Britain plus Northern Ireland.
But GB is the ISO 3166 code for the UK, including Northern Ireland. The reason is that the ISO committee wanted to avoid generic words like "united" and "kingdom" so they went for the more "unique" GB, in spite of being somewhat politically sensitive, confusing, and inconsistent with some other standards and every-day usage.
But GB is the ISO 3166 code for the UK, including Northern Ireland. The reason is that the ISO committee wanted to avoid generic words like "united" and "kingdom" so they went for the more "unique" GB, in spite of being somewhat politically sensitive, confusing, and inconsistent with some other standards and every-day usage.
Similar to Switzerland (CH).
I don't see any similarity. CH/ch is the one and only abbreviation used about everywhere. Which other one would be used by whom? The letters might not be obvious to any speaker of a living language. But that's intentionally I understood. They have several national and egen more local languages, so they chose an abbreviation from Latin.
GR/gr is ISO for Greece, but EU uses EL/el the previous commenter wrote. The latter seems to come from Greek language, although then spelled using the Latin alphabet
How are those cases similar, except for it's not obvious to the average English speaker where some letters came from?
GR/gr is ISO for Greece, but EU uses EL/el the previous commenter wrote. The latter seems to come from Greek language, although then spelled using the Latin alphabet
How are those cases similar, except for it's not obvious to the average English speaker where some letters came from?
I don’t understand: “CH” is the ISO Alpha-2 code for Switzerland. What would be confusing to commenter Gare?
Is there any other country that has a non-English ISO name?
LE. There are a few, such as Côte d'Ivoire, Curaçao etc. But those names have been used in practice much more frequently than their English names.
LE. There are a few, such as Côte d'Ivoire, Curaçao etc. But those names have been used in practice much more frequently than their English names.
If your place doesn't have a toponym in other languages it usually means that it hasn't been very important in history. The people who pushed for this change certainly feel quite the opposite about it, but to me it almost seems self-diminishing. "Our country is so insignificant it doesn't even have a name in languages that don't share our codepage"
Isn't Curaçao the English name? English doesn't usually have the ç character, but this is a loanword.
I'd say if Curaçao is a non-English name, then so is Botswana or Luxembourg and more than "a few" others.
I'd say if Curaçao is a non-English name, then so is Botswana or Luxembourg and more than "a few" others.
Åland Islands is the only other one I could see
Also: It's an autonomous region, doesn't quite count as country afaik.
Correct, it's not a country but an autonomous region belonging to Finland.
To make things not any easier, the only official language for Åland Islands is Swedish. The Swedish name is just Åland, nothing else. Nobody would call it Ålands öar, well a tourist brochure might call it Ålands örike (empire of islands) but that would sound ridiculous as an official name.
So basically Åland Islands can't be anything but an English name. Maybe not a very clean one because it contains a non-English letter. So Türkiye is not without precedence.
To make things not any easier, the only official language for Åland Islands is Swedish. The Swedish name is just Åland, nothing else. Nobody would call it Ålands öar, well a tourist brochure might call it Ålands örike (empire of islands) but that would sound ridiculous as an official name.
So basically Åland Islands can't be anything but an English name. Maybe not a very clean one because it contains a non-English letter. So Türkiye is not without precedence.
It does appear on the ISO list though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_3166_country_codes
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Same goes with Cabo Verde, Costa Rica, Les Seychelles
In my experience “Cape Verde” and “The Seyschelles” are more common in English. Martinique, like Costa Rica, is a loan word.
The only recent ISO change I noticed was “the Ukraine” -> “Ukraine” (still heard the old form until a few months ago) and “Belarussia” -> “Belarus”, both 30 years ago.
The only recent ISO change I noticed was “the Ukraine” -> “Ukraine” (still heard the old form until a few months ago) and “Belarussia” -> “Belarus”, both 30 years ago.
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I think what is meant is of letters of the English alphabet. English does not contain diacritics.
You would be naïve to think that, especially were you to write that on your résumé. That English has no diacritics is a façade built up to escape the fact that our keyboards make no provision for them.
(A little bit forced, but those are all English words I learned as properly having those appropriate diacritics, when I first learned those words back in grade school.)
(A little bit forced, but those are all English words I learned as properly having those appropriate diacritics, when I first learned those words back in grade school.)
Look those words up in the dictionary and they won’t have the diacritics, except as an alternative spelling. They’re loan words, and it’s a stylistic choice.
Ask 95% of laymen to write those words and there will be no diacritics, and the language is defined by its users.
Ask 95% of laymen to write those words and there will be no diacritics, and the language is defined by its users.
Sure, let's look them up in a dictionary: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/resume
résumé (noun) variants: or resume
Huh.
résumé (noun) variants: or resume
Huh.
Nice of you to skip over the first, primary entry and select the secondary entry.
The primary entry has no accent characters.
The first entry is for "resume", the verb, which is a different word than "résumé", the noun. Note that none of the definitions provided for the verb "resume" would come close to working where someone intends to use "résumé", the noun.
> English does not contain diacritics.
Tell it to the New Yorker, where orthography like coöperate is required by official policy.
As they would no doubt also be happy to explain, the diacritic there is not correctly referred to as an umlaut, as "umlaut" refers to the difference in pronunciation between e.g. German "u" and German "ü", while the diacritic in coöperate doesn't change the pronunciation of any letter but instead exists to indicate to the reader that the two letter Os are to be pronounced separately rather than interpreted as a digraph (as in "troop").
It is somewhat interesting to note that modern English speakers often feel that a mark for this purpose is needed, even though formally the orthography doesn't call for it - but they are much more likely to write "re-emerge" than to write "reëmerge".
Tell it to the New Yorker, where orthography like coöperate is required by official policy.
As they would no doubt also be happy to explain, the diacritic there is not correctly referred to as an umlaut, as "umlaut" refers to the difference in pronunciation between e.g. German "u" and German "ü", while the diacritic in coöperate doesn't change the pronunciation of any letter but instead exists to indicate to the reader that the two letter Os are to be pronounced separately rather than interpreted as a digraph (as in "troop").
It is somewhat interesting to note that modern English speakers often feel that a mark for this purpose is needed, even though formally the orthography doesn't call for it - but they are much more likely to write "re-emerge" than to write "reëmerge".
One publications strange style guide does not a language make.
It's not difficult to find diacritics in use outside the New Yorker, though generally not in that use. One exception would be the common spelling "naïve".
They missed the oldest trick in the book. Rename it to “AAA Türkiye” and make it easier for their citizens to sign up for things / get things delivered internationally.
Fun anecdote: in World of Warcraft (at least used to when I played/programmed them) addons load in alphabetical order and all operate and communicate in a single global Lua scope. The result is that library addon names start with an exclamation mark to be loaded first, and if a library is particularly fundamental, multiple exclamation marks so other libraries can depend on it.
One of the internal test systems tennant names where I work is like this (as there is a handy screen that lists them in alpha order)
About a week ago the UN approved the decision to change the country's name from Turkey to Türkiye. ISO now follows suit and updated the short and full name of the country.
As someone with a special character in my name - would not recommend. Way too many legacy IT systems and poorly configured ones
I was disappointed last year when filling an official COVID-19 form made by the Spanish Government that didn't support the acute accent in my very common (Spanish) last name.
It seems absurd to try to find a "standardized" ISO country name, especially to enforce local names in English. Country names are both endonyms (for the inhabitants) and exonyms, the way certain cultures / linguistic areas refer to another country. How exactly do you transliterate Türkiye in Cyrillic or Mongolian script, where does the umlaut go? Why would you want that, instead of leaving Mongolians to use whatever traditional name they use for Turkey?
And if Turkey can demand it, why not 日本, Deutschland or الإمارات العربية المتحدة ?
And if Turkey can demand it, why not 日本, Deutschland or الإمارات العربية المتحدة ?
Japan seems content with "Japan" for now but they have been trying to get English speakers to say Japanese names with the family name first recently, but it hasn't really caught on outside of state organs. Note this NHK article about the funeral of "Abe Shinzo" attended by current PM "Kishida Fumio." https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20220712_31/ (NHK is a state-run public broadcaster.)
I do wonder why we say Chinese and Korean names in the proper "backwards" order but have historically flipped Japanese names.
I do wonder why we say Chinese and Korean names in the proper "backwards" order but have historically flipped Japanese names.
I live in Hong Kong (and am a westener), and my identity documents flip my English name showing LAST, First Middle. It's never bothered me, but at least it's rather obvious given the capitalization and punctuation.
I don't care.
I'm going to continue to spell it Turkey. I'm also going to continue write Kiev.
Nothing against Ukraine or Turkey. But I feel zero need to change the way I name things in my native language.
I'm going to continue to spell it Turkey. I'm also going to continue write Kiev.
Nothing against Ukraine or Turkey. But I feel zero need to change the way I name things in my native language.
Guess we can just start calling you Bob then, since we don't care what people want to be called
Funny you should mention that.
My in-laws gave me a name in their own language, because they don't speak mine and very likely can't even pronounce my actual name.
They didn't mean offence by, I didn't take offence to it, they're using their language and sounds they're comfortable with, everything is fine.
My in-laws gave me a name in their own language, because they don't speak mine and very likely can't even pronounce my actual name.
They didn't mean offence by, I didn't take offence to it, they're using their language and sounds they're comfortable with, everything is fine.
Up to you whether to be offended or not, but that doesn't mean you can ignore other peoples' preferences and call them whatever you want. The amount of people who don't want to try and pronounce my 5 letter name and just want to give me an American name is ridiculous, and indeed offensive to me.
Yeah you have a very different mindset to me. I'd much, much rather people call me a name they know how to pronounce rather than listen to them butcher mine. I also think it's cool to have multiple names. Like Gandalf!
Many are my names in many countries, Mithrandir among the Elves, Tharkûn to the Dwarves; Olórin I was in my youth in the West that is forgotten, In the south Incánus, in the North Gandalf; to the East I go not.
Many are my names in many countries, Mithrandir among the Elves, Tharkûn to the Dwarves; Olórin I was in my youth in the West that is forgotten, In the south Incánus, in the North Gandalf; to the East I go not.
But that's the point, it doesn't matter what your mindset is. If a person's name is *a*, and you refuse to call them *a* because it's easier for you, then a lot of times that's offensive to people. Adding Gandalf and your opinion on how cool it is to try to downplay the disrespect doesn't change anything.
I've gone through almost 3 decades at this point with people either pronouncing my name wrong even after I've corrected them dozens of times (or they do it on purpose), or calling me an American name. It's tiring and the American one specifically is super offensive
I've gone through almost 3 decades at this point with people either pronouncing my name wrong even after I've corrected them dozens of times (or they do it on purpose), or calling me an American name. It's tiring and the American one specifically is super offensive
The actual point is that this is a classic social battle: One person is offended having to adjust to X and the other person is offended if they don't adjust. So how do we solve this, who is objectively right? Either you put maximum value on people's emotional welfare then you'll side with camp A or you side with least amount of energy expenditure then you go with camp B or various other partial camps exist as well which will all have their own social media campaigns to win the war. As you can probably tell, I consider this all a waste of energy so you can guess what camp I am in but I'm also in many partial camps that still respect people's names that they want to use. Lots of common sense should be factored in ("hey, what if Turkey decides to change their name every 5 years? Every 5min? Every 5 seconds? I still have to adjust?") Anyway, we can be pretty sure that whoever is talking about this issue on social media is already part of their battle camp and not going to make fair arguments. Kind of how you immediately went to an unfair position by implying that you'd call him a totally different name (=Bob), and how his position is supposedly that "we dont care about what people want"
and how his position is supposedly that "we dont care about what people want"
Except their comment literally starts with I don't care.
And you don't have to go to extremes of either bending over backwards for every request a person could have, or ignoring everything. It's very simple, if someone has a name, and you don't call them by that name even though they requested it, then you are being disrespectful. If someone is doing something considered too far outside the boundaries of the norm (changing their name every 5 minutes), then we can start putting limits. Otherwise I think it's very natural for someone to be want to be referred to themselves by the name they told you they prefer
Except their comment literally starts with I don't care.
And you don't have to go to extremes of either bending over backwards for every request a person could have, or ignoring everything. It's very simple, if someone has a name, and you don't call them by that name even though they requested it, then you are being disrespectful. If someone is doing something considered too far outside the boundaries of the norm (changing their name every 5 minutes), then we can start putting limits. Otherwise I think it's very natural for someone to be want to be referred to themselves by the name they told you they prefer
Yeah there are various sub camps and I'm not sure I fit into the two main ones.
This was about names of places. How I say the names of places in my own language (English) is not for the governments of Ukraine or Turkey to dictate to me.
People are different. If Bob wants to change their name to Steve (or Stephanie) happy to adjust. If someones wants to be referred to by a name I can't pronounce I'll give it my best shot. If they get upset by my best shot - well that's their issue. My name is "Lewis" and very few non-native speakers seem to be able to pronounce it properly. No one has ever apologised over it, or asked me how to say it, and I haven't lost sleep over this fact.
This was about names of places. How I say the names of places in my own language (English) is not for the governments of Ukraine or Turkey to dictate to me.
People are different. If Bob wants to change their name to Steve (or Stephanie) happy to adjust. If someones wants to be referred to by a name I can't pronounce I'll give it my best shot. If they get upset by my best shot - well that's their issue. My name is "Lewis" and very few non-native speakers seem to be able to pronounce it properly. No one has ever apologised over it, or asked me how to say it, and I haven't lost sleep over this fact.
I’m going to guess since your native country is English speaking, and I’m going to guess you grew up in said English speaking country. If these are the cases, then of course you can’t see why it would matter.
When you come from immigrant families like mine, these things matter more.
But also how is the name of a place any different? If Turkey was a person and asked you to call them Turkiye, would you have the same response? According to you, no. They aren’t asking you to call the US Birlesik Devletleri, they’re asking you to call their own country by what they deem is their proper name
When you come from immigrant families like mine, these things matter more.
But also how is the name of a place any different? If Turkey was a person and asked you to call them Turkiye, would you have the same response? According to you, no. They aren’t asking you to call the US Birlesik Devletleri, they’re asking you to call their own country by what they deem is their proper name
I was curious how “Türkiye” is supposed to be pronounced in English. The following video offers one recommendation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPPXvZQDlps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPPXvZQDlps
It sounds like the actors are having hard time pronouncing it, would you agree that it's hard for non-Turkish?
Good point. Some of the actors seem to be native speakers of North American English and are trying to pronounce the last vowel of "Türkiye" with the vowel of "bed" or "sell." That vowel doesn't normally appear in word-final position in that dialect of English, so the actors have to make some effort to say it.
Most English speakers trying to say "Türkiye" will, I suspect, use instead the vowel of "say" or "day."
Most English speakers trying to say "Türkiye" will, I suspect, use instead the vowel of "say" or "day."
Nice, another marker to know the date when software libraries were last updated (a recent one is the Swaziland -> Eswatini name change in 2018).
It can also be used as marker of the health of your opensource locale library.
It can also be used as marker of the health of your opensource locale library.
The name change was to eSwatini, with a small e, but you wrote Eswatini. This is a trend I noticed in the months after the change - people started out using a small e but then gradually transitioned to a more normalized spelling. Now almost everyone writes Eswatini.
I suspect the same will happen with Türkiye. For a while people will write it with ü but then eventually it will become Turkiye, without the diaeresis.
I suspect the same will happen with Türkiye. For a while people will write it with ü but then eventually it will become Turkiye, without the diaeresis.
Very interesting, thanks.
Perhaps someone's finalyly going to figure out Huawei products are EOL on release date?
Terrible branding. Going from a high-recognition, easy to pronounce and spell name to this. It's pretty well-established simple names always perform better. If the Turkish government was very liberal perhaps it would earn them some goodwill among the literati, but they tend to hate Erdogan.
> Easy to pronounce
That's very anglocentric
That's very anglocentric
In the big scheme of things, it's not the absolute easiest, but vs "Türkiye" there's no contest.
Nearly every language has their own name for Turkey because Türkiye is almost universally awkward regardless of how you write it down. The closest version that seems somewhat prevalent is something along the lines of Turkiya (usually spelled with a "ja"). But few seem to like the "ye". If I wanted to come up with a universal international name, I'd probably go with "Turkya" or "Turkia".
Few languages have a different name for Ankara - almost as easy as it gets.
Tur-key
Tür-ki-ye
Nearly every language has their own name for Turkey because Türkiye is almost universally awkward regardless of how you write it down. The closest version that seems somewhat prevalent is something along the lines of Turkiya (usually spelled with a "ja"). But few seem to like the "ye". If I wanted to come up with a universal international name, I'd probably go with "Turkya" or "Turkia".
Few languages have a different name for Ankara - almost as easy as it gets.
> That's very anglocentric
You must be confused. Nobody is saying Turkey should change its name in Turkish. This is about the name in English. And English should be Anglocentric.
You must be confused. Nobody is saying Turkey should change its name in Turkish. This is about the name in English. And English should be Anglocentric.
That's very anglocentric.
Isn't that the whole point?
Isn't that the whole point?
"Türkiye" isn't Turkish. It originates from Latin "Turchia" (land of Turks) and later French "Turquie." Actually, "Turkey" is anglicized form of "Turquie." So, there's no difference between two words apart from that both got adapted to the phonetic repository of their respective languages. So, even if all English-speakers start using "Türkiye" today, it'll probably degrade to "Turkey" anyway. This was such a waste of resources.
"Türkiye" has no meaning in Turkish. Proper "land of Turks" in Turkish would be "Türkyurdu" ("yurt" meaning home/homeland, yes, the same word for those large tents as they were the homes of nomadic Turks in Central Asia).
"Türkiye" has no meaning in Turkish. Proper "land of Turks" in Turkish would be "Türkyurdu" ("yurt" meaning home/homeland, yes, the same word for those large tents as they were the homes of nomadic Turks in Central Asia).
I have wondered for a while how long until the English world starts calling Georgia "Sakartvelo", considering that some other languages have already made the change:
https://www.rferl.org/a/lithuania-moves-change-official-name...
https://www.rferl.org/a/lithuania-moves-change-official-name...
I dunno Georgian but it really should be as Sakartvelo? Not like a base Kart(v) plus some local language changes for point of land?
Because as I can see:
- Fixes sa- and -o are for the area where X dwell⁰. For comapare, itʼs also used to sa-berʒn-eti «Greece»¹ sa-prang-eti «France»².
- Suffix -eli is for the person is from X³. Also used for other people. Suffix -v- is debatable, maybe itʼs for places.
So, I guess, in kinda Latin way itʼs Kart(v)ia.
---
⁰ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Georgia#Endonym
¹ https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/საბერძნეთი#Georgian
² https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/საფრანგეთი#Georgian
³ https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/2503906
Because as I can see:
- Fixes sa- and -o are for the area where X dwell⁰. For comapare, itʼs also used to sa-berʒn-eti «Greece»¹ sa-prang-eti «France»².
- Suffix -eli is for the person is from X³. Also used for other people. Suffix -v- is debatable, maybe itʼs for places.
So, I guess, in kinda Latin way itʼs Kart(v)ia.
---
⁰ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Georgia#Endonym
¹ https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/საბერძნეთი#Georgian
² https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/საფრანგეთი#Georgian
³ https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/2503906
I wonder how Türkiyish people feel about this change
I feel like a turkey saved from a trip to the slaughterhouse.
https://twitter.com/brammerayse/status/1542535497146408962
https://twitter.com/brammerayse/status/1542535497146408962
As a Turkish citizen, I found this change as stupid as hell
Unnecessary stunt from the government.
Keep in mind most people in 'Czechia' (the new official name for what we all call the Czech Republic) still prefer 'the Czech Republic'.
when the standard doesn't respect itself:
> List source: Türk Standardlari Enstitüsü (TSE), 1995-08-01; Administrative Map of __Turkey__ 2000;
> List source: Türk Standardlari Enstitüsü (TSE), 1995-08-01; Administrative Map of __Turkey__ 2000;
It's interesting to me what we do and don't decide to translate. Like if a name is too far away from English we'll just turn it into English but if it's close enough to English an English-speaker could basically figure out what it sounds like we don't translate it.
We make a product which sends data to some gov't system. If a user needs to send a correction, it should be done using the rules that were in place when the initial version was sent.
So all code lists, including country codes or EU membership, needs to have a validity date range per entry. Fun!
So all code lists, including country codes or EU membership, needs to have a validity date range per entry. Fun!
So, for any Turks out there. How do I pronouce 'Türkiye'?
Well, English lacks Ü, and İ, so in reality it will be Turkiye, which is will be said something like "turk-eye-eeee". You're welcome.
Well if y'all are gonna be like that I'm just going to call you guys Anatolia. I'm bringing it back, baby! /s
Strange... No "keyboard wars" on the comments yet. That's something different compared to other forums where Greeks and Turks start fighting and swearing at each other about names, history, borders and so on.
Interesting to note that this name change has to do with the "big vision" the current Turkish government has about the country, although I've read that this change is because they didn't like to be associated with the bird/animal Turkey :-)
Interesting to note that this name change has to do with the "big vision" the current Turkish government has about the country, although I've read that this change is because they didn't like to be associated with the bird/animal Turkey :-)
"Turkey -> Türkiye", doth not the problem solve.
What do people do without a Ü on their keyboard?
Poland ended communism with numerous streets dedicated to Lenin, Stalin, Dzierżynski et al. These went like overnight.
But maybe grayscale patrons remained and lingered. If someone was "just" a prime minister, not particularly zealous, but still in the Soviet service, are they ok or not? There are different waves of "decommunisation" going throughout time.
Thing is, each time renaming a street is a lot of havoc. Official records, business registration addresses, business cards, logos, subscriptions, everything needs to change.
For this reason such changes end up stuck in limbo and are often eventually abandoned or undone.
I wonder if Türkiye will encounter similar issues.
But maybe grayscale patrons remained and lingered. If someone was "just" a prime minister, not particularly zealous, but still in the Soviet service, are they ok or not? There are different waves of "decommunisation" going throughout time.
Thing is, each time renaming a street is a lot of havoc. Official records, business registration addresses, business cards, logos, subscriptions, everything needs to change.
For this reason such changes end up stuck in limbo and are often eventually abandoned or undone.
I wonder if Türkiye will encounter similar issues.
Is the "the" really lower case?
It would be odd if it were not.
Just as you would write "I went to the United States" not "I went to The United States".
(Of course, lower case here means that you should use lower or upper case according to its position in the sentence; it doesn't mean forcibly overridden to lower case like e.e.cummings.)
Just as you would write "I went to the United States" not "I went to The United States".
(Of course, lower case here means that you should use lower or upper case according to its position in the sentence; it doesn't mean forcibly overridden to lower case like e.e.cummings.)
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._E._Cummings#Name_and_capita...:
> The Chicago Manual of Style, which prescribes favoring non-standard capitalization of names in accordance with the bearer's strongly stated preference, notes "E. E. Cummings can be safely capitalized; it was one of his publishers, not he himself, who lowercased his name."
> The Chicago Manual of Style, which prescribes favoring non-standard capitalization of names in accordance with the bearer's strongly stated preference, notes "E. E. Cummings can be safely capitalized; it was one of his publishers, not he himself, who lowercased his name."
Yeah, the same clowns who decided that the proper noun the Internet should be capitalized the the same way as the adjective internet (as in internet protocols). I’m not sure I would consider their reasoning, well, reasonable.
Well there's other evidence in that section. I just picked something that was nicely quotable. The reasoning that the man himself usually capitalised his own name in the standard way so we should too is pretty hard to argue with.
You didn't need to justify your perfectly reasonable comment. I just hijacked your comment because I have an axe to grind.
I visit The Queen.
given nobody can even agree and decide between GB and UK I'll just skip this and get back to work...
now Turkish people have personality. congratulation, I am impressed Türkiye. Find me handsome, kisses, mughhht!
What has it changed to?
Turkey -> Türkiye
In that case they should fix the title. It should be: ISO name change for Turkey
Why not Turkland?
havkom(1)
henearkr(1)
"Turkey; Republic of Turkey changed to Turkey; Republic of Türkiye"
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/country-names/cou...
https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/the-permanent-committee...
There is the precedent of Burma/Myanmar, "Country name remains Burma reflecting common British English usage". Similarly for Cabo Verde, "Cape Verde had circulated a request for this form to be used, though UK has retained the common English usage for the country name".
However, it did recently change Swaziland to Eswatini and I know which one I'd vote for as being common usage.
The ISO codes are not always adopted verbatim. e.g. The UK gov list does not include Taiwan. ISO plays both sides, giving it a country code but calling it a province of China. On the other hand the UK does include Kosovo which is not an ISO country but is recognised as one by approx 50% of nations including the UK.
Other countries have similar national naming committees to the UK's PCGN, you can see a list here https://unstats.un.org/unsd/ungegn/nna/nna-committees/