The Turkish connection

Selen and I used to get a kick out of finding words and phrases that sounded similar in Turkish and Marathi our respective mother tongues. For example, Jalim Duniya, a phrase we use in Marathi (originali Hindi, Urdu) to dramatically convey ‘cruel world’ means exactly the same thing in Turkish just with less drama involved 😉

Not only do we have words that are similar but some words that point to India in some way, a reminder of the trade links between the regions long back.
When visiting the Spice market (Egyptian market), I saw something named Indian Saffron. After a bit of digging I realized that it was turmeric, not saffron at all. Seems that it is used as a low priced substitute food coloring for the real saffron. That made me very sad as we do grow Saffron in India. Many times it is also sold to unsuspecting European and North American buyers who do not understand the difference.

Another baffling one was ‘Hindi’, i.e. the bird Turkey. How did the bird get the name in the U.S. that points to Turkey and then in Turkey it points to India? After digging a bit for the origin of the word, the mystery deepens, the bird actually is native of the Americas so didnt really reach Europe from India via Turkey.  😮

This wikipedia article has some theories about the origin of the word. Some of it is related to Columbus. Of course, who else? 😉