"English is inherently mathematical, she noted, arming a writer with the perfectly precise word to match the meaning, while Turkish is an emotional, sentimental tongue, she said, better suited for writing about sorrow and the past."

So said a Turkish writer quoted in the New York Times. This kind of thing drives me crazy. One language is not inherently more mathematical or logical or precise than another. Obviously it is one's personal relation to a language that is infused (or not) with a certain degree of sentiment. To write about Turkey in English, as a Turk, implies a distancing effect, but one that should be separated from the Orientalist fantasy of an Eastern language particularly suited to the expression of sorrow. She should know better.