3 posts tagged “language”
My lungs have finally agreed to start working again. Although the asthma has not completely retreated, I only had a leave class once today because of a coughing fit. This is a big improvement. The guys at the pharmacy by now feel like old friends. I feel like we should play backgammon.
This means that I walked to school today instead of taking the trolley, and I can get back to exploring the city indead of just lying under my blanket and daydreaming of shoving pipecleaners into my bronchial tubes.
Half of my new class is from Germany, as well as my new roommate. (The Austrian girl decided to leave and we replaced her with another Teuton right away.) I’m thinking that this is my best opportunity in years to brush up with Deutsch. The new roommie is happy to help, and she seems to fit in with the rest of us rather well.
Likewise, my Turkish roommates have been great about speaking with me. Whether over chess or tea, we talk a lot and I can feel my Turkish getting better because of it. At home we have divided the refridgerator into three colums in which we write vocab words in English, Turkish, and German using a dry-erase marker. I now find myself staring at the refrigerator with the door closed instead of open
I can count this as a day that all of my dorkiness has finally paid off. Well, not in any monetary or important sense, but at least I can be smug. Today I was promoted from level 2 Turkish class to level 3. Having never really studied Turkish before coming, I will permit myself a secret inward smile to assuage my fears of running out of cash and having to sell my library books from the US on the streets of Istanbul. (Who am I kidding? No one wants to read books about waste disposal in the Caucuses except me.)
The downside of leaving my level 2 compatriots is that my current classmates are much less entertaining. They are all very nice, and probably good study partners, but they don’t fit into easy-to-mock stereotypes. Someone shed a tear for me here!
However, the new teacher is a blast. Today when we were learning what Carpetblogger calls “the gossip tense,” the teacher pointed to one middle-aged student and said: “He is learning Turkish because he left his wife in Bulgaria for a younger Turkish girlfriend. He wife doesn’t know about it, and he is maintaining a family in each country.” Then, pointing to another student she said, “I heard that he doesn’t tell people he is Italian because he hates the Italian people and is ashamed of his country.” To top it off, she was wearing a deliciously crazy outfit that was somehow a blend of Little Orphan Annie, Elaine Stritch, and an oompa loompa – and she pulled it off looking cute and professional. And the kicker: platform mary-janes. She is a force to be reckoned with. I can’t wait for tomorrow.
My Turkish class seems like it should be a sitcom – one of those plodding feel-good sitcoms whose jokes fall flat, only being signaled by the interruption of the canned laugh track. The teacher is a good sport and obviously good at his job, while the other students comprise your usual suspects in a language program.
1)
The nervous perfectionist – this is the guy who really
cares about every exercise and audibly berates himself for a mistake. Everyone
else has to endure his frequent self-deprecation, his voicing rising to a loud,
high-pitched screech when he is unsure of a phrase. He is a stutterer, and his
accent makes us cringe. This guy is the primary object of both my malice and
sympathy (in part because I imagine I used to be somewhat like that).
2)
The older gentleman – no one is really sure why this guy,
likely retired, ended up in Turkey but one can assume it has something to do
with a dream of the orient and the secrets therein.
3)
The mumblemouth Other – this guy is the odd man out, being the
only one who doesn’t converse comfortably in English, as well as having the
talent of swallowing every word in Turkish so that most interactions with him
consist of a lot of confused smiling and nodding on the part of his
interlocutor.
4)
The smart and pretty girl – she’s lucky in that she’s the only
female. If there were others, it might take attention away from her. She a
professional and a go-getter. She reigns over the class.
5) The unassuming university guy – he rolls with the punches and seems to enjoy watching the others. He is probably learning Turkish for a girlfriend. He comes from a social welfare state, and therefore doesn’t carry any stress.
This is probably not only cruel but also inaccurate, as I only met these people this morning. But we all know these types of people, and the way that they speak in class – either confident or unsure. I don’t have any truly ill feelings for these co-studiers, yet I do get the feeling of having gone through all this before.
