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IDNs Can Make All The Difference

Thursday, 24 April 2008
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A sad story reported on DomainBits about how not being able to use IDNs ended in two deaths and three people going to jail.

In Turkey, a husband and wife separated, but were trying to work things out - via text messaging.  The husband sent the wife a text message that was garbled - because IDNs weren't available. 

According to the article:

the use of "i" 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.)

Needless to say, the wife and her family were quite upset at the allegation.  When the husband showed up, he was confronted by the wife and her family over this.  A knife fight ensued, critically injuring the husband (who later committed suicide) and killing the wife.  The wife's father and two sisters are in jail because of the incident.

If IDNs had been available, these sorts of misunderstandings would not occur.  Apparently, there are many words in Turkish where using an "i" instead of an "ı" (i without a dot on top) radically changes the word's meaning.

Jeff Behrendt