Turkish Q and OEM and ΓΧ, Oh My!

A Letter from the Managing Editor

Faithful readers of SpecGram will be familiar with the exploits, real and imagined, of the Γραμματο-Χαοτικον—an underground alliance of linguists, philologists, and polyglots that encourages arbitrary and capricious change both in Language and among languages. Not all of their endeavors have been successful, but we, the Editors of SpecGram, have come to appreciate their efforts.

The organisers of the conference Distance in Language, Language of Distance, held in Munich, Germany, April 2013. Chiasmus of the Month November 2013

At the same time, we are quite friendly with the Board of Headships of The Original English Movement—which seeks to resolve the conflict between descriptivists and prescriptivists by fully embracing the notion that English should not change—not now, not in the future, not even in the past.

Naturally, we contacted our liaisons in these two groups when we heard the recent news concerning the de-criminalization of Q in Turkish. The ΓΧ, often reticent to admit to their exploits until they are well entrenched, claimed no responsibility. In this case, their protestations seem genuine, because they expressed admiration for the change, and lamented, “Why didn’t we think of that!”

The OEM headship we contacted expressed concern at the change, and announced the newly formed Original Turkish Movement to combat the threat to the orthographic purity of Turkish. We have since heard that, after learning a bit more about the history of Turkish orthography, the nacent organization has split into the anti-Q Original Turkish Movement and the pro–Arabic-script Original Original Turkish Movement. Let us hope they never delve too deeply into Azerbaijani.

Though we have little contact with the NLRa͡c, we’re sure their heads are spinning at this development; Turkish is so dear to their hearts.

We live in interesting times, to be sure.

	Letters to the Editor
	SpecGram Vol CLXVIII, No 3 Contents