In some European countries, armed with a mere smattering of French, German, Italian, and dimly-recalled Latin, one can take a rough guess at the odd word of Foreign; it doesn’t get you far, but it’s ever so slightly reassuring (cf. my Portuguese dream). But as I spend ever more time in Istanbul, though cosseted by wonderful multi-lingual friends, on the rare occasions when I have to fend for myself, coming across the occasional French loanword (ekip, garson), it’s good to find that English doesn’t butter any parsnips—and that globalization isn’t quite as, um, global as we may imagine.

So I’m eventually beginning to realise (Hello?) that I really should make a bit of an effort to augment my tiny, eccentric Turkish vocabulary, consisting merely of a few niche nouns like “shawm”, “recluse”, and “call to prayer”. As an entertainer I’m now scoring a certain success with Türkçe konuşmuyorum (“I don’t speak Turkish”)—a phrase that my rubbish pronunciation renders convincing. In one online tutorial that I consult I’m fond of the rubric “Var and Yok (Existence)”—deep, eh. It also has the worrying phrase

Sen doktor değil misin?
Are you not a doctor?

—cf. this suggestive scenario in my old German phrasebook:

The chambermaid never comes when I ring
[…]
Are you the chambermaid?

Google Translate is a miracle, whether for texting or voice messaging—the latter a real blessing for illiterate Anatolian (or Chinese) peasants, though it still hasn’t quite got the hang of my stammer (kekelemek)… When using it, I like to mouth the words with comic ineptitude while the recording plays, awaiting the reaction of my victims audience with a certain trepidation—which reminds me of yet another Monty Python sketch:

Words are all very well, but the wonderful world of Turkish grammar, with its vowel harmony and zany agglutinative suffixes (düşünemedim, “I was unable to think”, Evinizdeyim “I am at your house”), having seemed utterly impenetrable, is slowly becoming a system that I can just about imagine younger people acquiring, with more free space on their mental hard drives.

For more on language learning, see this roundup—the post of choice always being That is the snake that bit my foot. See also my two contrasting experiences in China. As to dabbling, click here for Alan Bennett’s consternation at being told “I see you dabble in playwriting”.