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12:00 AM
and yes, the musical's libretto was originally in English, so there :P
 
 
7 hours later…
6:59 AM
@Randal'Thor I thought you were talking about honorifics
 
7:28 AM
@KnightwantsLoongback Re: "forgetting what happened between us before": I had to look you up, as I had no idea who you were or what you were talking about. Even if I had remembered who you were, I'd still have answered the Kabir question. Personally, I try to answer questions iff they meet two criteria: (a) I know or can find out the answer and (b) the question seems worth the effort I'd need to put in. Your Kabir question met both criteria.
The earlier question that caused a disagreement between us met the first, not the second. In fact, I continue to regard that question as deeply objectionable. To recap the points I raised when it was posted:
First, you could very well have found out the answer just by reading the readily-available book, so the question was intellectually lazy. Second, insofar as you were "pestered" by the possibility that the novel might progress into homosexual topics, the question was homophobic.
The fact that Lit SE mods didn't agree with me on the first count caused me to realize that questions on this site aren't, after all, required to show the slightest effort on the part of the asker. I could post "What is the second line of the nursery rhyme Jack and Jill?" and the question would be allowed to stand.
The fact that a blatantly homophobic question was allowed to stand caused me to question the site's commitment to inclusivity. Rather than call out someone for saying a discussion of homosexual topics made them uncomfortable, the mods preferred to treat this as a perfectly normal and acceptable sentiment.
Does this feel like a personal attack? Well, then. Your "squick, possible homosexuality!" attitude in that question felt like a personal attack to me as well. And the mods' not removing it has damaged Lit SE's intellectual and moral standing in my mind.
@Randal'Thor My point was that the story calls him "Dr Mehmet Bey". If "Bey" is mister, then he's Dr Mr Bey. That seems interesting, as in most cultures I'm aware of, one honorific is all that's used.
I did know an Afghan dude whose name was Khalil Bey. AFAIK Bey was his last name, or at least, he used it as such.
 
 
2 hours later…
9:35 AM
0
Q: Help identifying a 90s children's horror/adventure story featuring an abandoned house, mad scientist, and spider creature

BeanmanThe key thing I remember about this story: In-universe, the folklore goes something like: if you go to the woods, and find the house, and press your face against the glass, there's a sudden horrifying realisation that the reflection you're looking at isn't your own but is the mad scientist lookin...

 
10:05 AM
@verbose Maybe "Bey" can be a surname too. Some of these honorifics are occasionally seen as surnames (maybe from the original introduction of surnames into Turkish culture? I assume they weren't always a thing there)
@verbose I don't remember if I was a mod yet when that question was asked, but anyway I've now edited it to distill it down to its bare essentials, without anything suggesting "squick". Regardless of the OP's motivation, the question itself seems a valid thing to ask, even if poorly researched. Lit.SE doesn't have any minimum requirement for research, in terms of the strict site scope; of course anything can be downvoted for lack of research, but not closed.
 
It would become a ton better question if you had simply read it through till the end and then asked if anything homosexual was implied (provided it wasn't just plainly stated, which would moot the entire question, but that's kind of the point).
Asking for the implications of something the subtext of which you might have missed makes a lot more sense than asking if something happens 100 pages in so you can stop reading now.
 
10:22 AM
@Randal'Thor I've now twice made the same mistake of saying "Dr Mr Bey" when I meant "Dr Mr Mehmet". Sigh. If Bey == mister, then Dr Mehmet Bey is Dr Mr Mehmet. I think you understood what I meant, though.
 
Yeah I got it :-) (and didn't even notice since I got the point, oddly enough)
 
@verbose I...was about to say. But then I thought I simply hadn't read the story and it really is that confusing.
 
@Randal'Thor The question got upvotes. An intellectually bankrupt, blatantly bigoted question was not only allowed to remain on the site despite my raising what I considered very pertinent objections to its offensiveness, it got effin' upvotes. I don't remember who the mods were at that time either: @Gallifreyan? @Mithical? But here's what I do, and will continue to, remember: how that question, and the dismissive attitude with which Lit SE handled the whole thing, made me feel.
So yeah, when you say it could have just been downvoted, that doesn't actually mean all that much.
haha @NapoleonWilson. You shoulda said something, I'd've caught my error sooner
 
10:42 AM
@verbose Which question are we talking about? I've been kinda out of the loop here for a while
 
@Mithical This one. @Randal'Thor just edited it to remove the overt "eek, homosexuality" bits, but I objected to its homophobia when it was first posted back in June.
 
Ah. Yeah, I wasn't a mod at that point anymore (stepped down October '19)
 
@verbose Yet, resentfulness like that is also what makes people write angry chat messages half a year later with noone having the thinnest idea why you're suddenly so worked up out of the blue.
 
Either in the question, or in the comments, there were tons of "Well, I don't want to get political, I just want to be sure there's nothing overtly homosexual about the book" types of remarks.
 
FTR: There is exactly one user I have on ignore on chat.SE. I leave the rest up to context.
 
10:48 AM
@NapoleonWilson Oh it was the OP's gesture of "let's forget what happened between us in the past" that brought up the topic.
 
@verbose I know.
 
As for "resentfulness" or being "worked up", I think of it more as my letting OP know how I feel about his gesture. Obviously, since I continue to contribute to Lit SE, my attitude toward the site remains on the whole positive.
 
Hear hear.
 
@Mithical Sorry, I didn't meant to be accusatory. I honestly don't remember who the mods were at that point, and more honestly, I don't hold it against the individual mods. I didn't raise it in chat, for one thing, or try to reach a mod. It wasn't priority (I work in politics, so I was pretty busy in the summer and fall, all the way until Nov 3). Thanks for clueing me in that there are ways to ignore a user in chat; I just used that feature for the first time 🙃
 
@verbose @verbose if we're talking about MDs, "Doktor bey" or "Doktor hanım" are appropriate when addressing doctors. If this may lead to ambiguity, I believe the usual way is to use "XX bey" or "XX hanım" to address someone
"hocam" is an informal-made-formal way of addressing pretty much anyone, from university students to medical doctors and university professors. Wouldn't use it in writing, but didn't see anyone object to it yet
 
11:01 AM
@Gallifreyan ah. In Indian languages too, one would say "doctor sahib" or some equivalent. Thanks.
 
The bigger question is, why is "doktor" a genuine Turkish word?
 
@NapoleonWilson It's pretty common worldwide? "doctor" is what one calls a medical practitioner in every Indian language I know as well. Specifically when referring to someone who practices Western medicine. Otherwise "hakiim" (for Unani, traditional medicine with Greek roots via Persia) or "vaid" (for Ayurveda, traditional Indian medicine) are prevalent too, but even in those cases one typically says "She's an Ayurvedic doctor" rather than "She's a vaid".
So it doesn't surprise me that "doktor" is common in Turkish
Loanwords are a thing, yo
 
Regarding that question, I must admit I only realised now after reading it again in its original form that it was suggesting "eek" or "squeak". In retrospect, I should've read it closer and done a bit of editing. I'm sorry for any disturbance it could've caused
cc @verbose
 
Thanks @Gallifreyan. The comments were even more so.
 
@verbose "hekim" is used in Turkish too, although I feel it's more archaic and is almost completely replaced by "doktor" nowadays
Having said that, it's present in the names of medical faculties, at least: "diş hekimliği" (dentistry), or "aile hekimi" (family doctor)
 
11:09 AM
@Gallifreyan ah. As Amir Khosro wrote, "zubaan-e-yaar man turkii, man turkii na mii daanam" (Persian for: "my beloved speaks the Turkish language, and the Turkish language is unknown to me")
 
@verbose For any future cases, a moderator flag on a post or a comment, or a ping in chat saying "gotta talk in private" is the surest way to go
 
Thanks, I'll keep that in mind. As I said, 'twas summer 2020 and the future of American democracy was (and remains) at stake, so I didn't pursue any avenues other than downvoting and commenting.
 
 
1 hour later…
12:19 PM
@Gallifreyan Using "hocam" to address pretty much anyone is a METU thing, isn't it? Not a universal thing in Turkey or even in Turkish universities.
@NapoleonWilson Might be one of those universal loanwords, like how "taxi" and "menu" and "hotel" are almost the same in so many languages worldwide. Also Turkish in particular borrowed a ton of words from European languages, especially French, when Ataturk and co were modernising the language about a century ago. They threw out the old alphabet and a lot of words that were directly from Arabic, and replaced it with the Latin alphabet and a load of European loanwords.
 
1:10 PM
@verbose While gathering info for my latest topic challenge proposal, I found another place which writes Tagore's name as "Rabindra Nath" rather than "Rabindranath". So it's not just one person who writes rather bafflingly anyway. I wonder if a question on "Rabindranath" vs "Rabindra Nath" would be accepted here, or if it rather belongs on a language site ...
 
1:29 PM
1
A: New Literature SE Topic Challenge Suggestions Thread

Rand al'ThorMuhammad Iqbal Muhammad Iqbal, sometimes called Allama Iqbal or Iqbal-e Lahori, was a 19th-to-20th-century Muslim multlingual poet, philosopher, and politican, one of the most important figures in Urdu poetry and also influential in Farsi poetry, the so-called "Poet of the East" and national poet...

 
2:28 PM
@Randal'Thor it was universal in Bilkent as well, and, I imagine, in a lot of other universities. Also from your link: "Underneath this phrase lies the philosophy that everyone has something to learn from each other. "
E.g. the cafeteria workers referred to me, an undergrad, as "hocam", and I referred to them as "hocam" as well
 
 
1 hour later…
3:52 PM
0
Q: What does "in coarse gray" and "iron" mean?

Andrzej_200Good evening! I continue to read "Great Expectations" and there is another question about a word that I'd like to put. A fearful man, in a coarse gray, with a great iron on his leg. I full-faced the word I don't understand. Would you be so kind and tell me what they signify?

 
 
3 hours later…
6:35 PM
 
6:47 PM
1
Q: Is the opening quote in Michael Crichton’s “Airframe” real or fictional?

user149408Michael Crichton’s 1996 novel “Airframe” opens with two quotations, one of which reads: The irony of the Information Age is that it has given new respectability to uninformed opinion. This is attributed to “Veteran reporter John Lawton, 68, speaking to the American Association of Broadcast Jour...

 
@Gallifreyan Huh, interesting. It's not like that in the Turkish universities I've visited. I know one prof in Turkey who calls everyone "hocam" (he was trained in METU), but people told me it's specifically a METU thing, and someone else (a Turk working in a Turkish university) even thought it's a personal quirk of that one professor.
 
7:11 PM
Maybe it became a METU-and-Bilkent thing.
 
7:45 PM
Why are there a bunch of deleted messages above?
 
8:02 PM
What if ... now hear me out on this one ... instead of creating a whole new alter ego, Henry Jekyll just got Basil Hallward to paint a portrait of him that, whenever he went on one of his disreputable jaunts, turned into one of Edward Hyde?
Wouldn't that be just Wilde?
Is that a good question to ask on the main site?
 
@bobble Someone acted out, there were flags and stuff was deleted. You didn't miss much.
@verbose Creating a new crossover fanfic? :-)
 
 
3 hours later…
10:50 PM
Is it okay to quote a large excerpt of the poem? I want to draw two pieces of evidence from the chorus, one from near the beginning and one from the end. However, only quoting these lines would not work as they require the surrounding context to understand. So I am planning to simply quote the entire chorus. Is this okay?
Looking closer, I could cut out 2 lines of the 8 line chorus, maximum, if I want to preserve the full context. But that would make the remaining parts read strangely.
I may be working on this answer instead of college apps
 

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