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The letter Q was illegal in Turkey from 1928 until last month

lrb.co.uk

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Re: The letter Q was illegal in Turkey from 1928 until last month

#51

Post by oftenwrong »

levosmetalo wrote: post #18
tty wrote: post #5

The Polish minority in Lithuania doesn't have the right to use the Polish orthography and/or letters of the Polish alphabet when writing their names. http://www.nouvelle-europe.eu/en/polish-national-minority-li...

... because allowing every minority or every individual to use their own alphabet would soon require the full unicode support everywhere, which is not a big deal, as well as that everyone else knows how to read/write it, which is a big deal. Btw, I am also not allowed to use Cyrillic alphabet or latin "ć" here in Germany when filling out official forms, but I don't consider that my rights are somehow jeopardized beca…

Brought this to mind: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57602984/hawaii-womans-l...

Re: The letter Q was illegal in Turkey from 1928 until last month

#52

Post by diorray »

afsina wrote: post #49
diorray wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1. And they're step by step trying to create jihadist Turkey just like Iran: http://img160.imageshack.us/img160/5756/77201414.jpg (before - after)

If I had a penny for every time I heard that claim... 30 years ago they used to use the same scare sentence over and over. Please get over with it.

So you're implying that you're 50~ years old. Sure, sure :))

Re: The letter Q was illegal in Turkey from 1928 until last month

#53

Post by panarky »

nkoren wrote: post #39
beloch wrote: post #19

To put things in perspective, you really need to take a look at the past to appreciate modern Turkey. The Ottoman empire was ruled by Sultan's who wielded absolute power, much like the leaders of other Arab nations today. Prior to the Sultan's were the emperor's of the Holy Roman empire, who wielded power so absolute that even medieval Europeans would have found it unsettling. Much of the symbolism used by European r…

Apologies for making a pedantic meta-comment, but may I recommend that you read this: http://www.apostrophe.org.uk/page2.html Your comment was otherwise well-written, but you misused apostrophes nine times (thrice in the first three sentences), which made it quite painful to read. I'm sure that your writing will be taken much more seriously if you fix this one glitch.

What a helpful, constructive, and non-judgmental comment. Upvoted both nkoren and beloch as examples of why I keep coming back to HN.

Re: The letter Q was illegal in Turkey from 1928 until last month

#54

Post by asdfs »

makmanalp wrote: post #47

This is a bit like one of those archaic laws like how in Staten Island, can only water your lawn if you hold the hose in your hand. No one actually gives a shit, and no one even knows that this was illegal in the first place. Both Turkish Q and F keyboard layouts have Q, W and X on them. Everyone uses them all the time, always. You can't use them in your official company name, but that's usually not your publicly vis…

>This is a bit like one of those archaic laws like how in Staten Island, can only water your lawn if you hold the hose in your hand. No one actually gives a shit, and no one even knows that this was illegal in the first place.

Probably water conservation, as it prevents sprinkler use. My city had a similar bylaw as recently as 10 years ago, until a new reservoir was built.

Re: The letter Q was illegal in Turkey from 1928 until last month

#55

Post by jpatokal »

pavlov wrote: post #29
jpatokal wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, accents can be pretty critical. In Finnish, näin means "I saw", but nain means "I had sex with". This put a bit of a twist on a friend trying to tell me "I saw the rapist in the park!" when the umlaut dropped off...

To make things even more complicated, nain means either "I had sex with N" or "I married N" depending on the case of the object noun. I've always thought it awfully pragmatic that the Finnish word for "getting married" is literally "to go and fuck together".

You can differentiate the cases by the conjugation of the object though. "nain Annan" (genetive, "all of") is marrying Anna, while "nain Annaa" (partitive, "part of") is fucking Anna. But yes, learners of Finnish should definitely be careful with that verb ;)

Re: The letter Q was illegal in Turkey from 1928 until last month

#56

Post by teamonkey »

vidarh wrote: post #46
teamonkey wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Turkish 'Q' layout is the most commonly used in Turkey and includes these 'illegal' letters. If these letters were truly illegal it'd be hard to imagine this keyboard standard existing.

That's like saying it'd be hard to imagine being able to buy alcohol due to prohibition. But in any case, there little doubt that Turkey has reformed a lot over the last two decades in particular, but the original claim I addressed was the claim that "it was never illegal in Turkey". I posted a link to a copy of the text of the law in question. Maybe it's an inaccurate copy. Maybe it was repealed before it came into…

> That's like saying it'd be hard to imagine being able to buy alcohol due to prohibition.

That really is quite a stretch. I'm imagining the absurdity of internet cafes all over Istanbul hiding their bootleg keyboards during a bust.

It's entirely anecdotal but I have Turkish relatives on one side of my family. They were allowed - encouraged - to learn English and French growing up, so the letters themselves certainly weren't illegal. There was no ban on newspapers or books written in other languages. However Turkish was the only officially recognized language in Turkey and Turkish, literally by definition, does not have those letters.

Re: The letter Q was illegal in Turkey from 1928 until last month

#57

Post by afsina »

diorray wrote: post #52
afsina wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had a penny for every time I heard that claim... 30 years ago they used to use the same scare sentence over and over. Please get over with it.

So you're implying that you're 50~ years old. Sure, sure :))

40. close enough.
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