group effort grocery list
By diana on Dec 7, 2011 | In capricious bloviations, talking türkiye
I'm about to leave base this afternoon to go downtown to do some work. I've signed out, locked my office, and stopped briefly to ask Astrid, who is setting up a joyously annoying Christmas tree in the middle of our hall, why she is moving it from its corner. (All of the divisions are having decorating contests, and even though the Turks don't celebrate Christmas, they're helping out here and there.) She said it is so people will come down to see the tree then they'll see our Santa, which is cobbled together from computer parts, at the end of the hall.
I say, "I see. Well, I'm going downtown."
Astrid: Is that spelled H-O-M-E?
ME: No. I'm going to the second American NSE.*
* National Support Element. We technically only have one, which is right on base with us, but there are still things we have to go to the Hilton to do.
Astrid: ?
ME: I'm going to the Hilton to do some paperwork.
Astrid: Oooh! Could you pick me up some crab cakes?
Me: Wot.
Astrid: Crab cakes.
She squints at me like she does when she isn't certain she has the right word. She's Dutch and has very strong English skills, but no matter how good your English, the fact that a native speaker doesn't understand you can make you doubt your abilities at least a little. In this case, my confusion is not about what she's saying but where I might find said items in the commissary. My brain settles on artificial crab meat, which--now that I bought it and brought it home--I realize is probably nothing close to what she meant.
Once we've settled that, I turn to go--I need to change into civvies and get to the shuttle stop in about 15 minutes--she says, "Oh! And...amandel."
Again: Wot.
Astrid: You know. They're little nuts. Like, in your throat.
She makes a motion that makes me think of a throat lozenge.
ME: You mean like Halls?
Astrid: No. Amandel. ...arg.
Rigo walks up. He's German.
Astrid: Rigo, what is amandel in English?
Rigo (giving her the same look I just gave her): Wot.
Carlos enters from the other end of the hall. He is also German.
Astrid: Carlos, what's the German word for amandel?
Carlos: I don't know, but the Turkish word* is "BAYdem."
* I know, right?
She pauses and glances around, and about this time, Fethi joins the group. Fethi is Turkish.
Astrid: Fethi, what is the English word for BAYdem?
Fethi: Wot.
Carlos: BAYdem. You know, a nut?
Fethi: Oooooh. Badim.
Carlos: YES! Now what is that in English?
Fethi (thinks for a long while--probably pausing to wonder what the hell is going on--and everyone waits): Almond.
Astrid: YES!
ME: Good god. How many do you want?
Astrid, grinning: Just one bag.
But all I could find were the roasty-salty ones in a can, which means I probably, even after all that effort, struck out.
But our division works as a team, baby.
d
PS: Except when they accidentally mangle one another's languages. In our last operation, we had a FOB* in Moron, Spain. The Turks, due to their language's pronunciation rules, pronounced it "moron," as did, I think, the Germans. I remember sitting through one particularly long exchange about "moron" Spain at the end of which Kike, who was lounging behind me the whole time, spoke disgustedly into the silence: "It's MuhRONE."
* Forward Operating Base.
Then there was the one time toward the end of OUP that some poor non-native English speaker had the misfortune of not knowing the correct pronunciation of "Niger"....
10 comments
Diana,
Benny Hill used to do some funny sketches about non-native speakers and their pronunciation attempts. My favorite talked about some singer who was coming on the show to perform favorite songs from his musical bum.
(Move the space a couple of characters to the left.)
For some reason the Brits seem to find a lot of humor in other people’s accents. A British cartoon I used to watch had a recurring character from space who spoke some mysterious tongue that no one could understand - a Scottish accent.
Dave
Ha!
In my last escape to Latina for a class, we had an instructor, from among the usual NATO crop of Italians, Germans, Spanish, Greeks, and Brits who normally teach the CIS (Communications and Information Systems) courses. He apologized up front for his accent, as his English was only marginal.
He was, of course, Scottish.
And I swooned on his every word. I just love the Scottish accent.
d
Oh. And weirdly…the class I took two months ago featured an instructor who had a difficult accent but who I understood clearly. After a few minutes, I realized that the American Army captain to my right was completely lost, and my boss (a Greek Lieutenant Colonel) had just given up. At this point, I realized that the accent of the instructor–who I understood perfectly, and I may have been the only person with that privilege–was Spanish.
My officemate is Spanish.
I told y’all about the sear-kweet, right?
It was a turning point.
d
“I told y’all about the sear-kweet, right?”
Diana,
Not that I recall.
I know what you mean about the Scottish accent. I’m the same way for some Irish variants. I need to mind my Ps and Qs when I’m working with people in our Belfast office. If one of the ladies start talking I might miss what they’re actually saying. (Usually it’s something like “We can’t finish until Dave fixes that bug in the binary protocol driver.")
Dave
When I was in Italy supporting OUP, I was the branch head of A6 and thus had occasion to do LOTS of VTCs or worse, what amounted to multi-user Skype sessions. In these sessions, we’d be hooked up with a group in Naples (which is the command we answer to), a maritime command somewhere else, and Izmir. The idea was to discuss ongoing communications projects and issues.
I have trouble with telephones, as I believe I’ve rambled about before, but multiply the problem with grainy connections and an unpredictable blend of accents, and you start getting a feel for the stress that was my daily existence. In one particular call, my officemate in Izmir, of all people, was trying to explain the status of a certain project to me. It had to do with one of our bases in Italy, I think. He said something about how the MOD (Ministry of Defense–I had that one) was waiting for certification so the seerkweet could then be accredited, or something along those lines. He went on, but my brain was stuck on seerkweet. I kept trying to put it in context, you know. About the third time he used the word, I said, “Fernando. Can you hear the drums?”
Kidding. I said, “Fernando, wait wait wait wait.” When he wound down, I said, “We’re waiting for the certification for the what?”
HIM: The seerkweet.
ME: The what?!
HIM, louder and slower: Seer-KWEET.
ME: “What’s a seerkweet?
HIM: You know, the, the seerkweet. The line connecting the bases.
ME: Oh. CIRCUIT.
HIM: The what?
d
Diana,
See, that’s the problem with literacy - just because you can read doesn’t mean you can pronounce it correctly. Even if you know the standard pronunciation rules for the language in question, chances are the natives don’t. (Cities in Ohio: Bellefontaine ("bellfountain") and Chauncey ("chancy").
You really got me with the drums reference. At first I thought you were asking to use drums as backup communications because obviously the tin cans and string weren’t working. Then I thought of the joke about how it’s very bad when the drums in the jungle stop. (Because that’s when the bass solo starts.) Then I linked it to Fernando.
Very well done, my friend.
Dave
Thank ya. Thank ya vera mush.
Fernando, by the way, is terrific. In addition to Spanish, he speaks fluent English, French, and German. This is a man who can understand the national languages in roughly 2/3rds of the world, if not more.
He also taught me to understand English when spoken with a Spanish accent. I went back to Latina (the ugliest town in Italy, in my opinion) in October, and we had a Spanish instructor for three hours. I was well into the second hour before I realized that I was one of the few people in the class who understood him. He was perfectly clear to me–probably because his accent wasn’t quite as pronounced as Fernando’s–but people all around me were balancing their checkbooks, throwing up their hands in supplication, and dozing off. It is a learned skill, understanding Spanish.
On the other hand, I think you have to be born French to understand English spoken by most Frenchmen. I have a couple of French friends who speak very good and very clear English, but they are the exception that prove the rule. We had a briefing, an important one, yesterday about a probable threat in certain areas, and the briefing was delivered by a Frenchman. It was indecipherable.
And I understand more French than I do of any other foreign language, too. That’s the weird part. (OK…my Turkish abilities are coming along, even when I don’t study.)
d
Diana,
That’s interesting about French speakers. I find it’s a little harder for me to follow a French Canadian person speaking English, but I just put it down to not having had enough practice. I feel like I’m trying to dance but whenever I find the beat, it changes.
Dave
…And perhaps that’s it. I just haven’t learned their dance yet.
BTW…I just got this….
“My favorite talked about some singer who was coming on the show to perform favorite songs from his musical bum.
(Move the space a couple of characters to the left.)”
Awesome. :)
d
I have really enjoyed the conversation BELOW the original post! Learning more than I ever thought I might need to know about how hard it is to understand what someone is saying - and in other languages, yet! I have trouble enough understanding what people AROUND ME say in ENGLISH!!!! lol
Glad it’s you and not me, although I do envy you the experience of being in Europe, and also of being ABLE to understand ANY of what you are hearing!
| « new year resolutions etc | rambling for the sake of rambling » |
