Language Soup

So we’re back in Turkey, en route to Bali, by way of Malaysia, and my brain just turned to language soup.

Like most Britons, I only speak one language well – my own.

I studied Latin and Greek and have schoolgirl French, some Indonesian and a bit of Chinese.

Once upon a time I also had pidgin Russian and Polish.

The Latin means I can figure out most shit from Catalan to Romanian and invent more-or-less plausible Spanish.

Still…

I am, fundamentally, to use that weird internet word that makes ignorance sound like a good thing, “monolingual”.

Y’know. Linguistically, I’m light years behind the average Dutch eight-year-old.

Over the last three months I have been pidgining merrily in Greek, Turkish, various different types of Arabic, Hebrew and Spanish.

Further, as we’re learning Chinese, I’ve been studying that twice a week.

And tonight, just as I was hoping my brain would get into gear for Bahasa (you are unlikely to *need* Bahasa in Bali, but it does help if you can ask a cab driver whether he’s taking the piss in plausible Indonesian), my brain gave up the ghost.

I mean, it froze.

Like my wallet, with my IstanbulKart and my Oyster Card, my Malaysian Ringgit, Euros, Turkish lira, British pounds and US dollars, plus the odd stray shekel or dirham, my brain has travelled so much it no longer makes sense.

My language skills just left the building.

I began to realise something was up when we were getting a taxi at the airport.

I’m getting used to the fact that when I, say, chat Indonesian on Facebook or Twitter, the first thing that comes out is Chinese.

But, normally, my brain catches up fairly rapidly with the required pidgin, at least where I’m in an environment where that language is written and spoken all around me.

This time? Nuh-uh.

Nothing doing.

Not even Chinese!

All that came out was Greek.

And, in case you’re not au fait with the Balkans, in Turkey that is a bad thing. A VERY bad thing.

At least as much of a bad thing as it would be in Bulgaria, and that’s saying something.

I could remember precisely two words of Turkish.

Bir means “one”, and that will stay with me until Alzheimer’s snatches it from my cold dead hands, largely because it sounds exactly like “beer”, which makes it absolutely fucking hilarious when you order a beer (bir bira, geddit?).

Also teşekkur, a pidgin approximation of a proper “thank you”, which I’ve badgered Zac to say about a gadzillion times.

The rest, gentle reader, was silence.

Come dinner time, the food words came back, or the ones on the menu, at least.

And I rocked up to the counter with a degree of confidence. The Turkish for “stew” is güveç, which is basically goulash, so that was easy.

The Turkish for “lemonade” is the same as Greek.

But whenever I tried to say “Yes” to the order the guy was repeating in Turkish, it came out in Greek.

Which is, gentle reader, A VERY BAD THING in Turkey.

I couldn’t remember the word for “yes” for the life of me.

Worse still, I wasn’t sure on the body language.

Is it Greece where they do that weird backward nod? Or Turkey?

I was in Greece this morning, I’m in Turkey now, and it’s still all Greek to me. Boom, boom!

Now, here’s the thing. There are a bunch of words that are fundamentally the same in Arabic, Hebrew and Turkish (often, also, in Bahasa, but that’s another story).

And the word for “bill” is one of those.

Our waiter does not speak English. Never fear!

“Kheseb, lausamat,” I say confidently.

He expresses his confusion in facial contortions straight out of The Pink Panther.

“Khisoub? Khisap?” I try.

It’s something like that, I KNOW it is…

“Khesap?” he volunteers.

“Nai,” I say (bugger! Greek again!). “Khesap, lausamat.”

He goes off to get the bill.

But I can’t help but notice that he looks puzzled.

“Zac,” I say, pitifully. “What language is lausamat?”

Zac looks at me, frowning. “Well, it isn’t Turkish,” he says.

No shit, Sherlock!

He thinks for a while. “It’s Arabic.”

“Yes!” I say. “It’s Arabic! Now what’s the Turkish for ‘please’?”

We come up with it in the end. It’s lütfen.

But my brain is toast. It’s fried.

And, gentle reader, I want it back.

Thanks to JAM Armstrong for the lead image.