Turkish (and Greek)

[ewb2 at cornell.edu]

On Thu, 23 Nov 2000, Anthony Appleyard wrote:

> ... Re Greeks in Anatolia, in the 1960's or 1970's I read a UK scuba diving
> magazine article about Turkish sport scuba divers, and one of them was called
> Triyandafilidis, which is clearly modern Greek for "son of Trinity-lover".

...which is more likely to be Modern Greek for "thirty leaves"
(trianta + phylla), which now means "rose" (the flower). It's clear
in the spelling of the surname in Greek letters: Triantaphyllide:s.
"nt" is pronounced nd or just d.

On the other hand, 'Trinity' is triada, where d is pronounced
as the voiced interdental that so many contributors have been
writing about.

> On BBC TV (=UK TV) news from Kosovo during the recent Kosovo troubles I saw
> road signs in various languages including Turkish (e.g. {U"sku"b} for
> {Skopje}). Is there still an outlier of Turkish speech there, or what?

There is. There are thousands of Turkish-speakers (enough to support
publications and schooling) in Macedonia and (at least until the last couple of
years) in Kosovo.

Wayles Browne
Department of Linguistics
Morrill Hall 220, Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853, U.S.A.

tel. 607-255-0712 (o), 607-273-3009 (h)
fax 607-255-2044 (write FOR W. BROWNE)
e-mail ewb2 at cornell.edu