Even though I knew I had correctly asked for a large aluminum baking pan, the salesclerk stared at me as if he was at a loss for words. Picking up a small version of what I was looking for, I repeated my request and added for good measure: “Like this, but bigger. I need it to cook a turkey.” Slowly nodding yes, he reached out and picked up a pile of small aluminum pans, the size used for individual portions of pudding. “How many of these do you need?” he queried, “Five, six, more?”At this point, another woman entered the store. Waiting her turn, she listened as I tried to get the salesman to understand what I was looking for. “No, that’s too small. I need the biggest you have. I am cooking a turkey. What is the biggest size you have?” I asked, using my hands to indicate the approximate size of pan I wanted. “Yes, I have these,” he said, still waving the tiny pans, “How many do you want?” “I need a much larger size. Do you have bigger pans?” I tried again. The woman shook her head as she listened.
As the salesman and I continued along the same lines for another couple of minutes, the woman decided to step in and see if she could help out. Stepping forward, she rolled her eyes at me, apparently fed up with the salesman’s inability to understand my Turkish. Very slowly and clearly, she repeated my question to the salesman: “Do… you… have… a… bigger… size… pan? To… cook… a… turkey… in.” He looked at her and suddenly he brightened up, finally understanding what I had been asking for all along. “Yes,” he responded to the woman, “of course I have larger sizes. Why didn’t she ask for one?” The woman shook her head and replied: “That’s exactly what she has been asking for. How could you not understand her? She has been asking you the same thing, and in Turkish.” Shaking his head, the salesman looked at me with surprise and said to the woman: “But she is foreign. Obviously she can’t speak Turkish. How does she expect me to understand her?” The woman looked at me in confusion, then turned back to the sales clerk and said: “What do you think she has been speaking if it is not Turkish? I have no trouble understanding her, so why can’t you?”
The man shrugged off the question and found the right sized pan that I had originally come in looking for. When I asked how much my purchase was, instead of telling me the cost, the man took out a notepad and wrote down the amount and showed it to me. I could not tell if he was upset because he realized too late that I did, in fact, speak Turkish, or if he was convinced that I would not be able to understand him if he simply told me the amount I owed. As I paid, I glanced at the woman who was still waiting her turn. She looked from the man to me, rolled her eyes, shook her head as if in amazement and shrugged her shoulders as she tried to suppress a giggle.
Many expats will recognize my experience as something familiar that they too have experienced at some time. To many native Turkish speakers, the concept that a foreigner is actually able to communicate in Turkish comes as a surprise. The majority of Turks, upon hearing a foreigner attempting to speak Turkish, will encourage the efforts and go out of their way in their efforts to communicate, often speaking slower and if needed, using simpler words.
However, there are those who assume that foreigners cannot possibly speak the language and to them, communication is difficult, if not impossible. This can lead to frustrating situations, to say the least. I do not know how many times I have had waiters who have been unable to understand my order. Granted, I speak Turkish with an American accent, but my accent is not so strong as to render my version of Turkish unintelligible. When out with Turkish friends, I have had waiters who could not understand my order until my Turkish friends repeated it to them word for word.
Of course, the other side of the coin was an old woman I met many years ago, when I was first struggling through my first class in Turkish. She was amazed that someone of my age was not already fluent in the language. As she chided me for my lack of knowledge, she said: “Turkish is the easiest language in the world. Everyone speaks it. Why, it is so easy that children learn with no problems. Maybe you are just a little slow and that is why you are not fluent.” When I told her that I was raised in a country where Turkish was not spoken and that I had been raised speaking both English and Spanish, she snorted and replied: “Turkish should have been your first language. You live here, so you should be fluent in the language already. If children learn it, that proves that it is the easiest language in the world. Besides, all the movies from America are in Turkish, so you should know it by now.” To her, a world where Turkish is not spoken is a foreign idea, one that she apparently had little interaction with. The fact that movies were dubbed into other languages did not enter into her world.
For foreigners dealing with the language, there will be moments of achievements and moments of disappointment. It can be hard to remember to have a sense of humor when a salesman or waiter refuses to understand your attempts at Turkish. However, for the most part, Turks will go out of their way to find ways to communicate. Even with my attempts at communication with my fractured Turkish, Turks often smile, nod and say: “You speak so quaintly. Slowly, slowly you are learning the language.”
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