where i live there are easily five languages echoing through my aparment at any given time. one of my roommates is from Iran and he speaks farsi and english as well as a decent amount of turkish. he has many friends over who typically have a good handle of english yet his girlfriend is from russia. one of his friends has a girlfriend from spain and of course there are the endless masses of kurdish people who frequently pay welcomed visits to our apartment from the cafe downstairs. in reality english isn't the primary language in my life anymore except for when i'm at work however ironically i'm usually explaining things in turkish half of the time anyway.
i once heard from my dear friend back in the states that you should learn a language, if for no other reason, to read the newspaper. i think about him every time i pick up a copy of 'Haber' or 'Cumhuriyet' while waiting for the pleasant moments to pass on the ferryboat connecting the two continents i live on. this language business is becoming a huge role in my life whereas i have taken to charging a decent amount of money for private lessons in my native tongue should i give them in turkish. some people read books to pass the time but i stare at a seven-tabbed window of Google Chrome swapping between two languages that aren't my own while trying to perfect the tongues of my upcoming travel destinations.
..but in this note, which is truly just to myself, i'd like to add that it is absolutely so much fun to learn a new language. in fact, the fears that people have of approaching someone and asking for directions or asking about items in a shop are actually quite the opposite in effect. i love being the goofy foreigner who takes bold steps at speaking a language very different to that of my own and i love the mistakes i make. a slight mistake can be a big one but if you catch yourself you can turn it into a really funny situation.
a few weeks ago i was helping a friend buy tickets to bulgaria and at the bus station he said the word in turkish 'your village' which i misheard as 'sheep' which believe it or not is actually quite close in turkish. i thought he was referring to the confused and nervous foreigner standing next to me who had absolutely no grasp of turkish and i proceeded to tell the man at the bus station that i was his shepheard and he was my lost sheep. of course i caught the error and somehow it worked out to be a story we both took home.
furthermore i feel it is your responsibility as a traveler and as a foreigner to make an attempt to speaking the language of the country you travel to. it is so stupid to watch people point at their mouth and grunt in a restaurant or not even know how to say 'thank you'. i feel that those people have missed the point of travel in general. it is of course our purpose as travelers to learn more about the places we travel and also to represent our own cultures as best as we can. surely we americans dont want to prove that we are knuckle dragging apes any more than we do in other instances.
i love this.. i love this lifestyle and i never want to leave it. it is so cool to experience different corners of the world and through language you can truly dive deeper into realms of humanity that no travel book can offer to you. language is a beautiful new mask that you can wear proudly and i urge everyone (native english speakers especially) to break the already well-known stereotype of being stubbornly monolingual and try to learn the tongues of other countries. it is of course true that language and culture are very similar in the end and you can learn so much from one another.
1 comment:
very well put chris. i was in costa rica with a guy who never attempted to speak in spanish - fool. i was constantly trying to speak purely spanish because it was fun and i had no problem being the goofy forigner who didn't know the language and f'd up a few words here or there. yeah point & grunt - haha. your right tho, at least learn thank you./
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