Friday, October 31, 2008

The rain in Spain...

Tonight I sank to a new linguistic nadir while cruising the aisles in the local Carrefour supermarket.

Browsing for mayonnaise, I accidentally de-shelved a jar of the stuff. Splat.

The Turkish verb for spill wasn't forthcoming and when I finally ran into a staff member, I managed to mumble something about squeezing the mayonnaise jar onto the floor. Except, I didn't mutter squeeze.

Let's just say that by inserting an open vowel in place of the required closed one (or was it the other way around), I informed the rather pallid-looking Carrefour employee that I had actually made love, albeit in a very coarse way, to the unfortunate mayonnaise. The bit about on the floor came out fine. Lucky me.

It kind of reminds me when, freshly arrived in this city, I politely cautioned an elderly woman to shut your damn mouth when she innocently questioned me about a lump of nasty looking cheese.

In fact, keslan, as I was made aware of not no long after, is rarely used for please wait a moment (while I locate my friend who can speak Turkish). In fact, it shouldn't be used at all.

Another reason that after three years, I ought consider enrolling in formal language classes.

The verb for spill in Turkish is dökmek. Now I remember.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You're a looser ... errr, I mean ...

Now my head is full of visions of you doing lewd things on the floor with a sloppy mess of mayonnaise. Nice work!

James said...

Enjoy the moment.