Friday, September 4, 2009
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Teaching Moment...
I have never been happy with the English language as the global standard. A half-billion people get a pass on learning a second language, and everywhere else, those with a sufficient education in it will get a shot at middle-management in a foreign-owned conglomerate. It just seems a waste of human industry and creativity, but thus is the efficiency of capitalism, and I decry it.
Don't get me wrong, I am well aware that, as a teacher of English, I'm a beneficiary and fountainhead of this problem. I field questions and requests to teach from people in all walks of life, who sincerely and desperately want to improve their English as a means of improving their livelihood. I learn Turkish as a hobby, but these people need English... or think they do.
Spend a few months in Istanbul, and surely you will get a request to teach. A superficial look at the Istanbul Craigslist illustrates the demand for "teachers" of the language.
Fluency in a language is really, not as easy as most people think.
This happened a few years ago.
A room mate, who at the time was very interested in popular American hip-hop, yelled from his bedroom one evening a very pointed question: "Sean, what is this 'rim job' they are singing about?"
It's a fair question, and I was certain Erdem would encounter the phrase again. American pop-culture is littered with a wealth of scatological terms, and while Erdem's English is, grammatically speaking, near flawless, this wasn't the first time I had played consultant on matters of English jargon or slang.
I explained...
I encouraged him to note that it is a noun, not a verb, and provided verbal derivatives...
I even helped with a few example sentences, so he could practice correct use of the phrase...
Teaching moment, end of story.
Three days later, Erdem and I were on a bus together. It was mid-morning, and I have no memory of where we were heading, probably the Akmerkez. We caught a bus and sat in a forward section, where two pairs of seats face each other. Our stop was close to the bus terminal, and finding the seat and space to spread out wasn't difficult, but at the next stop, most of the seats filled up and a middle-aged woman sat down next to Erdem.
We had been quiet, still waking up, and suddenly Erdem's brain reanimated, as it were.
He let out a big laugh, and said, "Rim job, rim job, rim job. Isn't that kind of dirty?"
As he did so, I could see what he couldn't: the eyes of a horrified, middle-aged woman growing wider with each mention of the phrase. Apparently, she knew some American slang, too.
Don't get me wrong, I am well aware that, as a teacher of English, I'm a beneficiary and fountainhead of this problem. I field questions and requests to teach from people in all walks of life, who sincerely and desperately want to improve their English as a means of improving their livelihood. I learn Turkish as a hobby, but these people need English... or think they do.
Spend a few months in Istanbul, and surely you will get a request to teach. A superficial look at the Istanbul Craigslist illustrates the demand for "teachers" of the language.
Fluency in a language is really, not as easy as most people think.
This happened a few years ago.
A room mate, who at the time was very interested in popular American hip-hop, yelled from his bedroom one evening a very pointed question: "Sean, what is this 'rim job' they are singing about?"
It's a fair question, and I was certain Erdem would encounter the phrase again. American pop-culture is littered with a wealth of scatological terms, and while Erdem's English is, grammatically speaking, near flawless, this wasn't the first time I had played consultant on matters of English jargon or slang.
I explained...
I encouraged him to note that it is a noun, not a verb, and provided verbal derivatives...
I even helped with a few example sentences, so he could practice correct use of the phrase...
Teaching moment, end of story.
Three days later, Erdem and I were on a bus together. It was mid-morning, and I have no memory of where we were heading, probably the Akmerkez. We caught a bus and sat in a forward section, where two pairs of seats face each other. Our stop was close to the bus terminal, and finding the seat and space to spread out wasn't difficult, but at the next stop, most of the seats filled up and a middle-aged woman sat down next to Erdem.
We had been quiet, still waking up, and suddenly Erdem's brain reanimated, as it were.
He let out a big laugh, and said, "Rim job, rim job, rim job. Isn't that kind of dirty?"
As he did so, I could see what he couldn't: the eyes of a horrified, middle-aged woman growing wider with each mention of the phrase. Apparently, she knew some American slang, too.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
So get this...
As stupid as my ACL injury is, I heard a better story, yesterday.
There are a lot of ACL injuries at the clinic where I go for therapy. Mostly football and basketball players. Some professionals, others who are just generally athletic, but all are in their mid-twenties (which is kinda interesting, statistically).
A little further along in his recovery than myself, is a massive Turkish man, about my age. He must be close to seven feet tall, and he is a husky fella, probably weighing over 350 pounds. He is clearly not an athlete.
We had to share an elevator yesterday, and it felt like a very small small space. I swear he was ducking to fit inside.
He tore his ACL (same ligament and same right knee as mine) about a month before I did. We were chatting about our injuries, and after explaining how mine had happened, he began to relay his story.
So get this, the kid tore his ACL playing virtual ping pong on his Nintendo Wii.
WTF!?!
There are a lot of ACL injuries at the clinic where I go for therapy. Mostly football and basketball players. Some professionals, others who are just generally athletic, but all are in their mid-twenties (which is kinda interesting, statistically).
A little further along in his recovery than myself, is a massive Turkish man, about my age. He must be close to seven feet tall, and he is a husky fella, probably weighing over 350 pounds. He is clearly not an athlete.
We had to share an elevator yesterday, and it felt like a very small small space. I swear he was ducking to fit inside.
He tore his ACL (same ligament and same right knee as mine) about a month before I did. We were chatting about our injuries, and after explaining how mine had happened, he began to relay his story.
So get this, the kid tore his ACL playing virtual ping pong on his Nintendo Wii.
WTF!?!
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
My therapist has a "kekekekeke..."
... a stutter.
This is not a therapist of the sofa variety, but a physical therapist, so we don't actually have to talk very much. The word, in Turkish, is kekelemek, and it is pronounced just as his stutter sounds.
I feel really bad, because I already have to work hard to understand Turkish, a language of many syllables. So, while I am desperately working to follow his directions, I now have the additional task of preventing my face from twisting into a grimace, or a smirk... worse yet, I'm also holding in the desire to laugh at the situation.
I mean come on... this is way over the top, and my poor sense of irony can't handle it. It's not his stutter that is funny, rather me, in the situation, trying to follow what he is saying. This is the kind of scenario that language school simply cannot prepare a person for.
This is not a therapist of the sofa variety, but a physical therapist, so we don't actually have to talk very much. The word, in Turkish, is kekelemek, and it is pronounced just as his stutter sounds.
I feel really bad, because I already have to work hard to understand Turkish, a language of many syllables. So, while I am desperately working to follow his directions, I now have the additional task of preventing my face from twisting into a grimace, or a smirk... worse yet, I'm also holding in the desire to laugh at the situation.
I mean come on... this is way over the top, and my poor sense of irony can't handle it. It's not his stutter that is funny, rather me, in the situation, trying to follow what he is saying. This is the kind of scenario that language school simply cannot prepare a person for.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
When I say "gimmick"...
... you say "cheap".
50 Cent is in Turkey this week. Curtis Jackson, in the middle of a performance in the Aegean summer resort of Çeşme, draped himself in a Turkish flag and began holler'in at the crowd:
"When I say Atatürk, you will say respect."
He also went on to ask audience members where he could find some weed.
Hayatimda bu kadar aptal bir hedefi benim memleketimden buraya gelebilecektiğini inanamiyordum.
Or in English, "Why do only douche bags have passports?"
Atatürk is a debatable figure, particularly among the audience that would want to see 50 Cent in concert here. It's hip-hop for god's sake, anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian, and lots of shiny. Bling... bling... come on!
Is it poor planning on the part of his handlers? I seriously doubt Curtis Jackson would knowingly go to Spain and pay his respects to Franco, or give a shout-out to Mussolini in Italy.
It's crap like this that makes it distincly embarrassing for me to be an American living in Turkey. In general, Americans know two things about Turkey:
1. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (by that I mean his name)
2. A problem with Kurdish people is happening somewhere near here
Many would be hard pressed to find it on a map, because we haven't ever formally declared war on the country, so there's been little media interest.
Just as when Hillary, and later Obama, came to visit, I'll hear about this event for months; from taxi drivers and pastry sellers, and all sorts of people, generally on the right wing of Turkish politics that I prefer not to speak with because most of them will probably echo the same damn opinion. Somehow, this will get sucked into the nationalist rhetoric that I so frequently run into, and I'll be the ass (or worse, really offend someone) for pointing out that Curtis Jackson, in point of fact, is just an ignorant hip-hop star and not really the sort of person a proper Kemalist wants waving the flag around.
Seriously, every time an American gets a hold of a microphone in this country, they take a shot at exposing how fundamentally retarded and ill-informed we can be. I need my insulated, self-righteous indignation and sense of cultural superiority in order to justify continuing to live here. It's just too easy to connect the dots: Curtis Jackson = Tard, and Curtis Jackson = American, thus American = Tard, and in conclusion Sean = Tard.
Thanks a lot Curtis, keep on rockin.
50 Cent is in Turkey this week. Curtis Jackson, in the middle of a performance in the Aegean summer resort of Çeşme, draped himself in a Turkish flag and began holler'in at the crowd:
"When I say Atatürk, you will say respect."
He also went on to ask audience members where he could find some weed.
Hayatimda bu kadar aptal bir hedefi benim memleketimden buraya gelebilecektiğini inanamiyordum.
Or in English, "Why do only douche bags have passports?"
Atatürk is a debatable figure, particularly among the audience that would want to see 50 Cent in concert here. It's hip-hop for god's sake, anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian, and lots of shiny. Bling... bling... come on!
Is it poor planning on the part of his handlers? I seriously doubt Curtis Jackson would knowingly go to Spain and pay his respects to Franco, or give a shout-out to Mussolini in Italy.
It's crap like this that makes it distincly embarrassing for me to be an American living in Turkey. In general, Americans know two things about Turkey:
1. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (by that I mean his name)
2. A problem with Kurdish people is happening somewhere near here
Many would be hard pressed to find it on a map, because we haven't ever formally declared war on the country, so there's been little media interest.
Just as when Hillary, and later Obama, came to visit, I'll hear about this event for months; from taxi drivers and pastry sellers, and all sorts of people, generally on the right wing of Turkish politics that I prefer not to speak with because most of them will probably echo the same damn opinion. Somehow, this will get sucked into the nationalist rhetoric that I so frequently run into, and I'll be the ass (or worse, really offend someone) for pointing out that Curtis Jackson, in point of fact, is just an ignorant hip-hop star and not really the sort of person a proper Kemalist wants waving the flag around.
Seriously, every time an American gets a hold of a microphone in this country, they take a shot at exposing how fundamentally retarded and ill-informed we can be. I need my insulated, self-righteous indignation and sense of cultural superiority in order to justify continuing to live here. It's just too easy to connect the dots: Curtis Jackson = Tard, and Curtis Jackson = American, thus American = Tard, and in conclusion Sean = Tard.
Thanks a lot Curtis, keep on rockin.
Monday, June 22, 2009
I have a driver...
OK, not in the sense that I have retained a chauffeur to drive me around the city, but kinda. I have a 'friend' who drives a taxi and lets me pay him to drive me around, and he is pretty much on call.
I met Hamdi sometime in the middle of the semester, so around March. I was running stupid-late for school, and jumping into a cab was really the only way I could avoid a lecture, explaining to me that I was late (which would clearly be redundant as I was already aware of my tardiness). I've lived in Turkey long enough to know that avoiding such lectures is worth as much as fifty lira, because the process is essentially a long dialog where my mistake is explained to me, I accept my mistake, and then the mistake is re-explained in similar words, after which I take responsibility, and there is a final round of examining why my mistake is important enough to be noted.
Taxi ride from my home to school: 8.26 Lira
Hamdi is really outgoing, and overly friendly in a way that Turkish people can sometimes be, in cases where the extent of the relationship is a financial transaction. For instance, the simitçi from whom I purchased a morning pastry, twice, seven months ago, felt completely comfortable engaging me in a conversation about the state of my knee when he saw it in a brace.
Weird.
In any event, Hamdi continued to follow-up with me after our first trip together, greeting us on our way to school, or giving us hell for not riding with him. I maybe got a ride from him twice more. Three weeks ago when I tore my ACL, I knew I would need safer transport than the jostling around that the bus could provide. Calling Hamdi seemed logical, and for the past several weeks, he's been ferrying me to and from school.
Needless to say, we are now becoming 'close' in his mind.
I suppose this is what I really want to write about. Turkey constantly presents challenges to my personal space. I've lost count of how many times I, the only person on a wide sidewalk, have been bumped into by the only other person on the sidewalk, who would have cleared me by fifteen feet if they hadn't drifted my way. On a visit to San Fransisco, in the fall of 2007, I reveled in the freedom of movement and walked a deserted (by my Istanbul standards) rush-hour block, with both my hands completely outstretched to their full wing-span.
I didn't touch a soul.
For our purposes now, I am not speaking of personal space in the how-close-you-stand-when-speaking-to-me sense. There are additional challenges to my sense of friendship and loyalty. Hamdi is a nice example of one such challenge. We talk in the cab, and he is entertaining. I do not dislike him. He consistently picks me up, gets me where I need to be, and we have not been in anything resembling an accident (which I consider a perk). I offer what I feel is customer loyalty, calling him back because I trust and am pleased with his service.
I just don't know what to do, though, when the man begins asking me to get breakfast with him in the morning, or go to a cafe on the other side of Istanbul for an afternoon. The seeming homo-eroticism of a man-date with Hamdi does not bother me. I have lived here long enough to know there is nothing sexual about it.
Rather, I simply don't feel a man-date with my driver is appropriate.
I met Hamdi sometime in the middle of the semester, so around March. I was running stupid-late for school, and jumping into a cab was really the only way I could avoid a lecture, explaining to me that I was late (which would clearly be redundant as I was already aware of my tardiness). I've lived in Turkey long enough to know that avoiding such lectures is worth as much as fifty lira, because the process is essentially a long dialog where my mistake is explained to me, I accept my mistake, and then the mistake is re-explained in similar words, after which I take responsibility, and there is a final round of examining why my mistake is important enough to be noted.
Taxi ride from my home to school: 8.26 Lira
Hamdi is really outgoing, and overly friendly in a way that Turkish people can sometimes be, in cases where the extent of the relationship is a financial transaction. For instance, the simitçi from whom I purchased a morning pastry, twice, seven months ago, felt completely comfortable engaging me in a conversation about the state of my knee when he saw it in a brace.
Weird.
In any event, Hamdi continued to follow-up with me after our first trip together, greeting us on our way to school, or giving us hell for not riding with him. I maybe got a ride from him twice more. Three weeks ago when I tore my ACL, I knew I would need safer transport than the jostling around that the bus could provide. Calling Hamdi seemed logical, and for the past several weeks, he's been ferrying me to and from school.
Needless to say, we are now becoming 'close' in his mind.
I suppose this is what I really want to write about. Turkey constantly presents challenges to my personal space. I've lost count of how many times I, the only person on a wide sidewalk, have been bumped into by the only other person on the sidewalk, who would have cleared me by fifteen feet if they hadn't drifted my way. On a visit to San Fransisco, in the fall of 2007, I reveled in the freedom of movement and walked a deserted (by my Istanbul standards) rush-hour block, with both my hands completely outstretched to their full wing-span.
I didn't touch a soul.
For our purposes now, I am not speaking of personal space in the how-close-you-stand-when-speaking-to-me sense. There are additional challenges to my sense of friendship and loyalty. Hamdi is a nice example of one such challenge. We talk in the cab, and he is entertaining. I do not dislike him. He consistently picks me up, gets me where I need to be, and we have not been in anything resembling an accident (which I consider a perk). I offer what I feel is customer loyalty, calling him back because I trust and am pleased with his service.
I just don't know what to do, though, when the man begins asking me to get breakfast with him in the morning, or go to a cafe on the other side of Istanbul for an afternoon. The seeming homo-eroticism of a man-date with Hamdi does not bother me. I have lived here long enough to know there is nothing sexual about it.
Rather, I simply don't feel a man-date with my driver is appropriate.
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