TURKEY TROUBLED

Greymouth Evening Star, 11 May 1929, Page 12

TURKEY TROUBLED

alphabetical chaos.

When the Turkish Government, ordered all shop and office signs and names to be changed to the new letters of the Latin alphabet the official spelling dictionary had not yet been published. The only principle which the population could go upon was that the spelling was to be phonetic. So they said their own names and businesses over to themselves conscientiously till they got what they believed to be the right sound and spelling, and proceeded to make the alterations demanded by the authorThe consequence is that there is •now a chaos of spelling all over the country. In Constantinople, it has been decided that municipal officers are to go round all the business quarters and order the inhabitants to adopt the official spellings. They will carry the official spelling dictionary and when they see a mis-spelling will make the persons responsible change it within a week, under pain of a fine. / - - The confusion at present ( extends even to persons’ own names. Thus Abdoulla effendi has been reprimanded for giving himself three letters too many and obviously being under Arabic influence still. He is to be made to take out the ‘o’, one of the ‘l’s’ and one of the ‘f’s.’- Then he will be orthographically a true Turkish citizen called Abdula efendi. At present doctors call themselves ‘ dokdoru” or “doktor” on their signs, apartment becomes “apartamani” or “apartman,” and everywhere there are a thousand and one divergences. The municipal spelling officers wnl put this right, but for a long time the population will find conformity to the official spelling one of the hardest points in the new language. When “club” can be indifferently—according to mere sound —as “klubu” and “kulupu” it will be hard to keep to the spelling alone approved officially. There is also at present a lack of copies of the dictionary, so that the population in its ordinary writing has to follow its instincts and hearing. Meanwhile the Language Commission has fixed the spelling of the names of 64 provinces of the Republic. The chief changes are that Stamboul the Turkish name for Constantinople—is written Instahbul, Angora becomes Ankara, Brusa turns into Bursa, Trebizond into Trabzon, Adalia into Antalia, and Smyrna into Izmir. Foreign names are to be left in their foreign spelling except where they contain letters not in the new Turkish, alphabet. This is a great simplification, because at first it was proposed to spell Prague (Praha), for instance, as “Pirag,” and to carry out other similar malformations of foreign place-names.