Date: Sat, 4 Mar 1995 08:29:12 -0500

From: Ron Rabin RABINRL[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]SNYBUFAA.CS.SNYBUF.EDU

Subject: Re: Ozark(s) and other plural(s)



Just to correct some impressions created by the comments on Turkey and

Turkish:



The Republic of Turkey (just recently born after the dissolution of the

Ottoman Empire) reformed many social institutions--politial, economic

and linguistic--and did so consciously in a desire to "turn West," not

to become a "great power" but in the belief that these institutions

were preferable to what they had before and where their past had taken

them. As with so many countries' histories, they had a leader with a

vision of a different future, and Ataturk saw the future in the West.



Turkey Romanized the orthography of Turkish because the Arabic script

that the Ottoman theocracy had enforced on the language was a bad fit; was

well beyond merely not phonetic and well into ambiguous. The new

representation of the language, togther with a descriptive grammar

presented by professional linguists, made wide-spread literacy practicable.



Perhaps an issue about the spelling of the name of the country is

something I missed. It's Turkey, isn't it? The only difficulty I ever

heard the Turks having with the name, in English speaking countries,

is that it harkens to the name of a bird they find rather stupid; in

Turkish, the bird is called "hindi," and so made someone else's problem.



Ron Rabin

Buffalo State College