Originally Published in Time Out Istanbul magazine, 2004
From the street-wise combination of Turkish and English comes a new language and a better understanding of each other’s culture
By Aubree Galvin Caunter
Communicating with locals in a foreign country is a bit like becoming a mime: it’s all about the hand gestures. But, spend a few months, pick up a few words, and suddenly instead of flapping your arms wildly at the bread in the basket, you’ll be uttering your first, “Ekmek, please.” Congratulations, you’ve graduated to the land of language blending.
It’s not a new concept. The official term for a speaker communicating in non-standard grammar or vocabulary is called pidgin. But for the specific combination of Turkish and English, let’s dub it Turk-lish.
The use of this half-native lingo is an art form being perfected on the streets, yet Turk-lish acquisition traits are undefined as we each adopt words in respective importance to our daily lives. For instance, my first Turkish word was hayır, meaning “no” probably because I’m a glass-half-full kinda girl and I say no to everything. In sharp comparison, my husband’s first Turkish word was bira (beer) and don’t even think that his second word wasn’t daha (more!).
I have friends who’ve never taken a day of formal Turkish training in their lives who navigate successfully through Eminönü markets, bargaining away with merchants using Turk-lish. My favorite is, “That’s way çok pahalı (too expensive).” These are the same ladies who, despite my eight months of classroom-learned Turkish, run circles around me when speaking to locals. The secret is livability: their Turk-lish is simply more useful than mine. Whereas I learned to conjugate 100 verbs, they learned to finesse their delivery to better accommodate this bargaining-based culture.
You’ll notice, though, that these ladies are not going it alone: getting their point across has a lot to do with the mutual willingness of the native speaker. And Turks, I find, are the greatest of all populations when it comes to tolerating non-native speakers. They are happy to listen to you butcher their hard-fought language (instituted by Atatürk following the formation of the Republic in 1923) because they’re thrilled to have foreigners try at all. Turkish is one of the most difficult languages to learn for a native English speaker, with a complete reversal of sentence structure. Turks as a people are a generous bunch, and to their extreme credit, they extend the greatest courtesy to foreigners just getting a handle on their speech.
This works to the betterment of both locals and foreigners. Yes, we butcher our respective un-native languages, but in the end, we come closer to understanding where the other comes from. Like, I know now that Turkish and English speakers share some universal communication tendencies. Take, for example, a mud-covered van in a parking lot. No doubt kids in America would quickly seize the opportunity to use their finger to write “wash me” in the dirt. No different here: two weeks ago, I saw the same van driving through Beşiktaş with “beni yika” (wash me) written on it.
The spread of Turk-lish is aided by Istanbul’s adoption of overseas marketing terminology into its vernacular. Two months ago at the Starbucks in Akmerkez a chalk sign with the daily special hung above the counter: Venti Ekstra Caramelli Caramel Cream Frapuccino. Here, you have Turkish grammar (Caramelli, meaning “with caramel”) blended not only with English but with the maddeningly ubiquitous Starbucks-ese.
Perhaps when it comes to communication, the most telling detail is in the inflection of our voices. Because Turkish has a question word incorporated into its grammar, raising the pitch of your voice at the end of the sentence is moot. But we non-native speakers do it anyway, out of sheer force of habit. This use of intonation also plays a key in interpreting foreign sounds – a child on a playground in Istanbul sings the same teasing phrase as those in America: nah, nah, nah, nah, nah.
This is the universal truth of utterance. The sounds we make are rooted in our sheer humanness. When I grunt and point to the shrimp in the display case, clearly I want some seafood (now, determining how much I want necessitates the wild hand gesturing). Conversely, when the shrimp seller points at my money (all those lovely, confusing colors of Turkish Lira) I understand that he wants me to pay.
As Istanbul gains popularity as a vacation destination for North Americans, there’s no doubt that this language dance will continue to evolve. Perhaps, we may see more Turkish making its way to the States (as imagined in the merhaba-loving Chevy Chase commercials for Cola Turka). But in the meantime, on behalf of all native English speakers, let me say to all the Turks who so politely and encouragingly embrace us: “Choke Tesh Heck Her Eder Hem.”
