Why The Letter Q Has Only Been Legal In Turkey For 8 Years

Video written by Adam Chase

[Madsp]

Turkish amusement parks must have been amazing 8 years ago, considering no queues were allowed

[MartyFox]

Fun fact, Erdogan is actually spelled Erdoğan with one of those extra letters they added. The ğ sound doesn’t exist in English so English speakers most commonly pronounce it like… w.

[farhan]

oh yes, I have found it, THE MISTAKE IN YOUR VIDEO. You said that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is the founder of Turkish Empire. But he is actually the founder of Republic of Turkey. SO GUESS WHAT? Now you have a material for your next mistake video.

[dmitryanderson]

The part about Russian is the other way around: there's no "w" sound in Russian, so there's no letter for it. There is, however, a "w" sound in Belarusian, so there is a letter for it - ў

[antirion]

2:38 Atatürk was the founder of the Republic of Turkey, not the Turkish (ottoman?) Empire.

[jeffreybernath]

At 1:42, you say, "There's no /w/ sound in Russian, because there's no letter for that." You have that backwards. It would be more correct to say, "The Russian alphabet doesn't have a letter like 'W', because there's no sound like /w/ in the Russian language." The spoken language is the thing that shapes the writing system, not the reverse. Your video even demonstrates this point, when you talk about how Ataturk adjusted the Roman alphabet to fit Turkish better, by adding and removing letters.

[ikbalguerrache]

No way he used Algeria's flag for modern standard Arabic, Algerian dialect is the furthest thing from standard Arabic 💀

[LAG]

"Learn the skills of paying my mortgage"
LMAO, this is why I come back to these videos

[benmerkey]

crazy how every natural language selected its entire phonological inventory by only using sounds they had already made letters for

[ilyascan]

This video is based on bits and pieces. No one made decent research for it but i heard some friend style knowledge all of it.
First of all, Atatürk is founder of Republic of Turkey not the empire.
Secondly, Turkish Latin Script was accepted and introduced in 1928. Hawar Script is invented in 1932 and it did not accept popularly for long time. Kurds used Arabic Script for long time. Even today many Kurds still use Arabic Script instead of Latin Script.
Thirdly, law was not about banning letters, it was about formal using. This law was made to abandon old script and modernization. When someone wanted to use these letters, they could use them. Also, if i want to use 'ğ' or 'ö' in English it would be absurd. Same logic would be applied here.
Kurdish language was oppressed for many years but this law was technical law and after coup d'état in 1980 it used frequently. Also, I have to add this you could put Kurdish names even most oppressed times of Kurdish language. Generally this topic is used as reason to become refugee in EU countries for many years.
If you read till here, have a nice day all Kurds, Turks and every people.

[ibrozdemir]

Comparing Atatürk and Erdoğan, saying Atatürk was racist and erdoğan loves democracy is like: comparing apple and cigarette, and saying "hey apple seed is bad for you, so apple is bad, cigarette gives you dopamin there for it is the greatest thing ever..

[ModifyBankai]

Interesting
As a Turkish person I literally never even knew those letters were ever "illegal" lol

[Mladjasmilic]

1:38
Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian have letters Ш, Ч, and Ж, while English has no their equivalent. West Slavic have Š, Č and Ž, which make same sound. In English, these are Sh, Ch and Zh.
Polish uses W for V, and Ł for W.

[RusNad]

1:23 You say the Roman alphabet doesn't have a letter for the sound Qaf makes, but it kind of does. The letter Q doesn't have its own sound in Latin, it adopted it from Greek, which adopted it from Phoenician, which used it for the same Semitic consonant Qaf. The reason the Greeks adopted this letter despite not having that consonant was that the letters were also used to write numbers so they needed all the letters. It doesn't survive in Greek but stuck around in Latin (which used the letter combination qu for kw sounds).

tl;dr the letters qaf and Q have the same Phoenician ancestor

[silvertongue]

Kurdish Latin Alphabet was created in 1932 after Turkish Latin Alphabet which was created in 1928. So, when an alphabet for Turkish Language was being devised, there was no Kurdish Latin Alphabet to think of. The lack of qwx is in fact due to those sounds not existing in Turkish. The problems related to Kurdish Language and qwx arose much later on.

Edit: Also, wtf is Turkish Empire? It is Republic of Turkey

[markusoliverasagtg]

The letters Q, W, X werent "banned" because the government hated Kurds (in fact, the Kurdish Latin alphabet was invented 4 years after the Turkish Latin alphabet to be compatible with it) they were simply not included in the Turkish alphabet because there was no need for them in Turkish. They were discouraged from usage in Turkish due to the possibility of educated speakers of European languages such as French mistakenly using them.
And the stricter intrepretation of this resulting in sort of a ban was brought by Kenan Evren in the 1980 coup (kenan evren in general is a bell end look him up) NOT by Atatürk, why would he, he was a fluent French speaker, a language with a lot of Q's in it. What was allowed in 2013 was to have these letters in official documents like ID cards etc in the same way you could not record "Çöpçü Şişli Yoğurdu" in England or America properly because the English alphabet does not have Ç Ğ ı Ş Ö Ü, thus to give Kurdish names you replaced Q W X with K V H .

[curlyqv]

Damn, I’ve only been legal in Turkey for 8 years

[LuxisAlukard]

2:38 Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was NOT founder of Turkish Empire - he was founder of modern Turkish republic, because Turish Empire collapsed after World War 1.
Ah, I can see this in new "mistakes video" =)

[Devillunar]

Some correction: The Latin Turkish Alphabet was officialy adapted in 1928 and the Kurdish Latin Alphabet was first proposed in 1932. The Kurdish Alphabet took inspiration from the Turkish Alphabet thats why it is very similar except this three letters. In the Turkish Alphabet reason for the exlusion of these three letters were simply because it didn't needed them. The racist laws came in the later years. So the Turkish Alphabet was not made to be racist or anything of that sort.

[jstnrgrs]

"Russians don't pronounce w because there's no letter for that". I'm pretty sure it's the other way around. Russian doesn't have a letter for w because Russians don't pronounce that sound.