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0 pointsarp2423y ago0 comments

Clearly there are limits to what is reasonable though; Vietnam is the common spelling in English, and I think it would be unreasonable to demand everyone spells it as Việt Nam. I can type most diacritics without too much effort, but no idea how to do that ệ double diacritic.

The title on HN actually gets it "wrong" by the way, as it's supposed to be Türkiye, not Turkiye.

Things can have more than one spelling or name, and the "best" one depends on context and personal preference. You can argue from Constantinople to Istanbul about this; but it all seems rather pointless. I wish people would just accept that other people have different preferences. This fits in the "color vs. colour" or "courgette vs. zucchini" category.

Whether Türkiye or Turkiye catches on and becomes the more common spelling? We'll see. I guess it will eventually, but it may take a while.

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midoridensha3y ago

At least "Vietnam" is somewhat close to the native spelling. I live in Japan, and the English name is nothing at all like the native name (日本, romanized as "nihon"). But you don't see the Japanese government throwing a fit over this. Furthermore, the name in many other languages is the same or much like "Japan": in German, it's spelled the same, but pronounced "yapan" since there's no (English) J sound. What does the Turkish government have to say about the Japanese name for Turkey ("トルコ", romanized as "toruko")? If the Turkish government insisted they spell it "Türkiye", no one here is going to pay attention because none of those characters are part of the Japanese language, nor is that name even pronounceable using the sounds available.

supercheetah3y ago

It did make it confusing though. For a long time as a kid, I always wondered why I never heard native Japanese speakers say "Japan" unless they were speaking English. While I couldn't understand it, I could somewhere reasonably sometimes hear words where I've seen it's romanization, but not ever hearing "Japan" was quite baffling for a long time.

rat99883y ago

You don't have to feel so strongly about other countries pronunciation. It doesn't matter much. You can still use Turkey and people will understand what you talk about. The problem will only arise in official communications between governments. I believe you aren't part of them anyway.

Gibbon13y ago

> it's supposed to be Türkiye, not Turkiye.

English doesn't have umlauts

arp242OP3y ago

It's not uncommon to have various diacritics in loanwords; e.g. über, führer, señor, façade, crème brûlée, or proper names such as Schrödinger, Gödel. All of these can be spelled without the diacritic too, but also with it.

Gibbon13y ago

Native English speaker have literally no idea what umlauts means. And the connection between how a word is spoken vs how it's spelled is tenuous indeed. So really there isn't any point.

earthling81183y ago

This is the important part. Sure, go ahead and add whatever decorations to the characters you want. 99%+ of us will have no idea what they mean and treat them like they don't exist. Pronouncing those isn't taught to the vast majority because they are not even remotely commonly used. What use is any extra indication when nobody knows what it means?

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midoridensha3y ago

supercheetah3y ago

rat99883y ago

Gibbon13y ago

> it's supposed to be Türkiye, not Turkiye.

English doesn't have umlauts

arp242OP3y ago

Gibbon13y ago

Native English speaker have literally no idea what umlauts means. And the connection between how a word is spoken vs how it's spelled is tenuous indeed. So really there isn't any point.

earthling81183y ago

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