Language

Gürkan and Phillip’s girlfriend Özlem were both very plussed by my Turkish and even more so by my drive to learn. I was told by both of them that my Turkish was better than Phillp’s. I laughed at their kind joke, but the last several days have proven them to be quite serious. I saw the same deer-in-the-headlights stare reflected in my flatmate’s face at lunch while we watched helplessly as a string of verbal miscommunications and misunderstandings gradually morphed my order from a shepherd’s salad into meatball sandwich. Later that day, while butchering a verb conjugation in front of Gürkan, he encouraged me by telling me that Phillip doesn’t even try to conjugate things. Although I’m beginning to see how it is entirely possible to get by here with a minimal understanding of Turkish, I find it incomprehensible that one wouldn’t put concerted effort into learning it, especially if one had lived here a year and had a Turkish girlfriend with Turkish parents. It strikes me like continuing to complacently bring a knife to a regularly scheduled gunfight. To be fair, Philip’s English is fluent-and-a-half, so perhaps he deserves to take a break.