Best put, Turkish is a delicious language. It is as complex, flavorful and enigmatic as the indigenous Turkish cuisine it more often than not accompanies. Like the country itself, located at a geographic and historic crossroads, the language is a mix of native Turkic and foreign Arabic, Farsi, French and English words. Served up hot and quick, Turkish certainly takes a discriminating palette and discerning set of ears to bring out and truly appreciate its real zest.
A quick look around my Turkish Language Class reveals an equally diversified demographic of Turkish Language Learners. There are students from Morocco, Syria, Palestine, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Slovenia, Germany, France, Italy, Greece, Hungary, Bolivia, Peru and the Ukraine all using and learning Turkish as the Lingua Franca (Just remember to grab the right dictionary on your way out).
Eight months on, my Turkish is simmering slow and steady. My notebooks are full of Turkish verse that is waiting patiently to be committed to memory and to be put into practice with enough repetition, to come fluidly out of my mouth. In the meantime, I’ll maintain a balanced diet of Turkish culinary masterpieces being recklessly jammed down my mouth.
“Yavash Yavash.” Slowly, slowly. Even the word itself, according to a local waiter allowing me to order in Turkish, makes you slow down and allows pause for thought.
And time you do need, for like all great chefs, left alone to their own devices, the Turkish Linguistic Kitchen can cook up some full course meals:
“Gelemeyebilirim” I might not be able to come.
Only to be outdone by the following:
Cekoslavakyalilastiromadiklarimizdan.
Are you one of those people who we unsuccessfully tried to make resemble the citizens of Czechoslovakia?
Thank goodness, the fall of communism has assigned that country and all its attendant epithets to the historical dustbin.
Q. How does this happen?
A. Through the process of Agglutination where grammatical functions are indicated by attaching various suffixes on to the stem word. (They key word there is various.)
Single words can be entire sentences and complete sentences can be expressed in a single word.
Turkish is as sophisticated and elegant as a mongrel language can be.
Expressive and delectable. Yavash, Yavash!
Now I’ll take a mouthful of that.
