Reuters is reporting that a Turkish court has fined 20 people some US$75 each for using the letters Q and W on placards. The signs, displayed last year at a Kurdish new year celebration, were written in Kurdish. <\/p>\n
The 1928 Law on the Adoption and Application of Turkish Letters changed the Turkish alphabet from the Arabic script to a modified Latin script and required all signs, advertising, newspapers and official documents to only use Turkish letters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Kurdish, when written in the Roman alphabet, makes use of several letters not found in the Turkish alphabet, including Q, W, and X. <\/p>\n
A ban on Q and X here in Taiwan might go over well with some ideologues. Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs already prevents people from using Hanyu Pinyin (which, unlike Wade-Giles and the locally developed Tongyong Pinyin, uses those two letters) on their passports, even though that’s the system the president of the country uses for the romanized version of his own name! <\/p>\n
source: 20 fined for using letters W and Q<\/a>, Reuters, October 25, 2005. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Reuters is reporting that a Turkish court has fined 20 people some US$75 each for using the letters Q and W on placards. The signs, displayed last year at a Kurdish new year celebration, were written in Kurdish. The 1928 … Continue reading