# Dotted-i costs two lives **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 4, 2010, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dotted-i-costs-two-lives/562951 "2010-12-04T18:55:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dotted-i-costs-two-lives/562951/1 "2010-12-04T18:55:24Z")
Here’s [a news story](http://gizmodo.com/382026/a-cellphones-missing-dot-kills-two-people-puts-three-more-in-jail) from Turkey that might be hilarious except that it led to two tragic deaths: > [@](#): > > The life of 20-year-old Emine, and her 24-year-old husband Ramazan Çalçoban was pretty much the normal life of any couple in a separation process. After deciding to split up, the two kept having bitter arguments over the cellphone, sending text messages to each other until … the lack of a single dot over a letter—product of a faulty localization of the cellphone’s typing system—caused a chain of events that ended in a violent blood bath … > > The use of “i” [instead of “ı”] resulted in an SMS with a completely twisted meaning: instead of writing the word “sıkısınca” it looked like he wrote “sikisince.” Ramazan wanted to write “You change the topic every time you run out of arguments” (sounds familiar enough) but what Emine read was, “You change the topic every time they are fucking you” (sounds familiar too.) > > Emine then showed the message to her father, … > Injured and bleeding, with a knife on his chest, Ramazan tried to escape… > … Emine bleed to dead as the family waited for an ambulance to cross Ankara’s hellish traffic to reach their home. > > Confused by all the events, [Ramazan] later killed himself in jail. > > Apparently it’s not the first incident of this kind caused by the damned dot on top of the letter i… (I found this story at [The Risks Digest](http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/26.20.html#subj16), a fascinating (and frightening) newsletter.) ---
**Author:** ![fuzzypickles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/9d8465/32.png) [@fuzzypickles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fuzzypickles)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dotted-i-costs-two-lives/562951/2 "2010-12-04T19:12:59Z")
Now there’s a cautionary tail. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dotted-i-costs-two-lives/562951/3 "2010-12-04T19:26:02Z")
And _[that](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_-aqc14tIy6E/Sk5_GaYlN_I/AAAAAAAAAEg/BXbfCp3tssc/s1600/j.%2Bwalter%2Bweatherman.jpg)_ is why you always proof read your text messages. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dotted-i-costs-two-lives/562951/4 "2010-12-04T19:33:29Z")
That’s fıcked up, rıght there. ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2010, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dotted-i-costs-two-lives/562951/5 "2010-12-05T13:00:31Z")
I’m gonna have to call bullshit on this one. I worked a year in Turkey (in fact, at the time this article was written) and even my extremely basic cellphone was set up for the closed i no problem. Plus the fact that the final letter of the two words (‘e’ vs ‘a’) changes depending on the vowel in the stem of the word; the closed i would take ‘a’ so even if the fellow’s cell phone didn’t have that letter, the ‘a’ would have been a dead giveaway as to what he actually meant. And, finally, Ankara traffic is not all that hellish. Got more than its share of crazy unskilled drivers, sure, but it ain’t hellish. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2010, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dotted-i-costs-two-lives/562951/6 "2010-12-05T13:12:55Z")
Oh you silly foreigners. It’s hard not to laugh at this stuff, since everyone is sort of collectively guilty for abiding by a society this retarded. I mean really - they didn’t bother to consider a typo where the alternate meaning makes perfect sense - they just decided to murder the guy? Whee. The irony of having advanced technology in a society that’s apparently about 800 years behind the times. Besides, if you’re going to kill someone over a text message, it should be because it’s written like “u shld bring ur kidz lol l8r” or something. I could totally sympathize with that. What the hell would “you change the argument whenever they’re fucking you” mean, anyway? Every once in a while when she’s on the phone 3 dudes jump out of the closet and start banging her and she yells “I WANT TO TALK ABOUT KITTENS NOW!”? ---
**Author:** ![Leon497](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/dfb087/32.png) [@Leon497](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leon497)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2010, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dotted-i-costs-two-lives/562951/7 "2010-12-05T15:13:56Z")
I am suspicious, how did anyone know that was what happened if he was stabbed right away? How would he know without seeing the message and sure sounds like little time for that. If he did, why would he kill himself knowing he did not even say that? It sounds like something made up after a suicide to me. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2010, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dotted-i-costs-two-lives/562951/8 "2010-12-06T03:55:10Z")
The ultimate source was > **[Küçücük bir nokta tam 5 kişiyi yaktı](https://www.hurriyet.com.tr/gundem/kucucuk-bir-nokta-tam-5-kisiyi-yakti-8748359)** > > Cep mesajında Türkçe karakter yokluğu, faciaya yol açtı. Bir koca, eşine, ’sıkışınca konuyu değiştiriyorsun’ mesajı çekti. Hassas kelimedeki ’ı’lar ’i’... which does indeed Google Translate much as shown. Perhaps someone with Turkish can comment on hurriyet, or look for confirmations. I’ve no idea of authenticity myself, am just reporting an interesting story. But the objections raised seem unconvincing to me. Yes, the word was misspelled either way, and one way made little sense. But the family was prepared to be angry, and didn’t take time to engage in linguistic analysis. Whether the “faulty” celephone was old, imported or misconfigured I won’t speculate. Perhaps sender was too lazy for extra clicks required for undotted-i ? I’m likely wrong. It would be nice to Google and try to check the facts, but that’s a task for someone proficient in Turkish. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![clarkstar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/439d5e/32.png) [@clarkstar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clarkstar)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2010, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dotted-i-costs-two-lives/562951/9 "2010-12-06T04:59:51Z")
i’m failing to see who killed the girl? ---
**Author:** ![RandMcnally](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b782af/32.png) [@RandMcnally](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RandMcnally)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2010, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dotted-i-costs-two-lives/562951/10 "2010-12-06T05:05:01Z")
> [@clarkstar](#): > > i’m failing to see who killed the girl? Yeah, I’m a bit confused too. So the guy sent the text to the girl, who then showed her family. And then the dad stabbed the girl while the guy was in jail and hung himself? How’d he get stabbed? ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2010, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dotted-i-costs-two-lives/562951/11 "2010-12-06T05:58:18Z")
> [@clarkstar](#): > > i’m failing to see who killed the girl? The girl and her family tried to kill the guy. The guy killed the girl in self-defense. Then the guy killed himself in jail. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2010, 9:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dotted-i-costs-two-lives/562951/12 "2010-12-06T09:49:49Z")
> [@clarkstar](#): > > i’m failing to see who killed the girl? My bad. I knew there was a rule against excessively long quotes, so posted an overly brief summary and assumed any interested would click on the [news story](http://gizmodo.com/382026/a-cellphones-missing-dot-kills-two-people-puts-three-more-in-jail) cited in the very first line of my post. Didn’t that link work for you? Here are the three relevant paragraphs: > [@](#): > > Emine then showed the message to her father, who—enraged—called Ramazan, accusing him of treating his daughter as a prostitute. Ramazan went to the family’s home to apologize, only to be greeted by the father, Emine, two sisters and a lot of very sharp knives. > > Injured and bleeding, with a knife on his chest, Ramazan tried to escape. Emine was still trying to finish him on the door, but he managed to take the knife out of his chest and attacked back, wounding her. Ramazan finally escaped, and was caught by the police, but Emine bleed to dead as the family waited for an ambulance to cross Ankara’s hellish traffic to reach their home. > > Confused by all the events, he later killed himself in jail. ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2010, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dotted-i-costs-two-lives/562951/13 "2010-12-06T15:14:13Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > Whee. The irony of having advanced technology in a society that’s apparently about 800 years behind the times. And what kind of society might that be? I lived and worked in Turkey, and it is certainly not 800 years behind the times. Seriously, even if the story is true (and the Hurriyet article linked to from the Gizmodo site does relate the same incident) this is three-year-old small potatoes. There is plenty of serious issues to criticize Turkey for; all this does is let people sit back and say things like **Senor Beef** says upthread and conveniently forget that stupidity is hardly in short supply Stateside. Back to the story for a second, though, let’s consider something. The couple in question were married; presumably they’d done quite a bit of texting throughout their relationship. One would naturally think that if the husband’s cell phone wasn’t set up for the closed ‘i’, the wife would already be very familiar with the issue. All of a sudden she’s going to forget about that and misinterpret something he says? :dubious: