In some religions languages are created by God as a punishment. At one point all humans spoke the same language, and they wanted to created a tower that was so high that it could reach eaven. This was against God´s will, but the people continued building it. By making everybody speak a different language, they couldn´t build the tower anymore (they couldn´t communicate), and the tower crumbled. People than scattered the earth as God wanted in the first place. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel

I don´t believe this, but it´s still a nice story. Different language in different regions can also be found in a lot of animals. A lot of birds have slightly different sounds in different countries.

It depends... Usually I think in Dutch or English. That is why my Turkish isn´t good enough yet When I start thinking in Turkish I´ll be fluent. When I think about stuff in my family it´s usually in Dutch, when I think about work it´s usually in English.

I meant Spanish as a global language, instead of English, not Turkish. My name isn´t Barbara lol, it says barba_mama, the name if a cartoon Funny, in this particular thread Anyway, I vote for calling Turkey something completely different. Turkey isn´t filled with Turks (ethnically) anyway, so how about a name that represents the rich culture of Turkey and it´s variety of people? And something ending with -stan is always nice... Perhaps something linking back to the Ottoman empire...

Ah, nooo, forget about it... in the case of a national name change Turkey would have to change the money... AGAIN.

Oh, and Dutch people tend to learn foreign languages faster, because we have foreign language education from a young age. We´re used to it. Turkey is somewhere in the middle when it comes to difficulty, compared to other languages I´ve learned. In my experience, Turkish is easy to learn for people who are good in Math...

...so this is why some Turkish people have veryyy strange accents, they learn English like this! Is Törkiş really the best way to write this... maybe Tırkiş is better...

Isn´t Spanish the most spoken language in the world? In any case, in Dutch we say "Turkije" which almosts sounds the same as Turkiye, and has nothing to do with animals. Calling The Netherlands Holland, in the official language is stranger. Holland is only two provinces of The Netherlands and some people don´t see themselves as Hollanders at all. Personally, I don´t know of many other language besides Turkey that officially call my country Hollanda. It´s like calling Turkey (the country) Eskisehir or Ankara. I think calling a country a name that is historically and geographically incorrect is stranger than calling a country something that might lead to jokes. In any case, Turkey the country was not named after turkey the animal. Turkey the animal was named after Turkey the country. However, I think Hindistan was named after hindi the animal.

So Turks will also stop calling India Hindistan?

Edited (5/17/2012) by barba_mama [my posts keep turning up totally cleared... Anyway, I speak Nederlands, not Dutch or Hollandaca... but I won´t set up a campaign to make everybody else change their own language´s way of addressing my language (or country)]

Edited (5/17/2012) by barba_mama [gozleme?]