Ну Погоди Funky Cafe!
I spent the better part of a morning reminiscing about a cartoon of my childhood "НУ ПОГОДИ" meaning "I'll get you!" The cartoon was produced in the Soviet Union during the Sixties and Seventies and features a wolf trying constantly to catch a rabbit. Because I'm such a great guy here's a link to where you can watch all 18 episodes with real player. Clickez Ici!
What does this obscure Russian cartoon have to do with Istanbul? Probably more than I could imagine, because I'm not coming up with anything.
Turkish has different words for the hair on your head (saç) and body hair (kıl). I learned this after Apau covered his hand in rubbing alcohol and lit it on fire, something he had never done before. He's always wanting to build his vocabulary and it surprised him that I called both the hairs on his head and ones he had just singed off, "hair." It was not the confusion that arose from my distinguishing "napkin" and "tissue" which are both "selpak," and not the ultimate confusion that ensued when one of the cooks pointed to a picture of three trees and asked me what is was. (There is no 'th' sound in Turkish and many Turks can only make it with much difficulty, much like English speakers confronted with 'kh' as in "Khabarovsk" or "khub.") Living here has given me a more intimate sense of how vocabularies are formed. Like how it's frequently repeated that Inuits have a whole plethora of words to describe what English labels "snow," an extreme (and probably exaggerated) example.
Current fashion among the students at the school requires the boys to wear button up shirts with at least three buttons undone and nothing underneath. If they are one of the greats, perhaps they have an unzipped cardigan hanging from their shoulder like a cape. T-Shirts often carry phrases like "College Athletic Team" stylized to look like a sports team's logo, "much more," and other inanities I have been unable to read.
I have been given a new task beyond talking to the students. My powers of English will now be put towards making menu boards for the cafe with "funky" names for our menu items. At first I protested, making new names seems trivial and they wouldn't fit very well. Then I realized this is my opportunity to create funny English phrases that would make native speakers chuckle. So it's "Groove Salad" and "Disco Soup" from now on! Eat a Break-dance Burger today!
What does this obscure Russian cartoon have to do with Istanbul? Probably more than I could imagine, because I'm not coming up with anything.
Turkish has different words for the hair on your head (saç) and body hair (kıl). I learned this after Apau covered his hand in rubbing alcohol and lit it on fire, something he had never done before. He's always wanting to build his vocabulary and it surprised him that I called both the hairs on his head and ones he had just singed off, "hair." It was not the confusion that arose from my distinguishing "napkin" and "tissue" which are both "selpak," and not the ultimate confusion that ensued when one of the cooks pointed to a picture of three trees and asked me what is was. (There is no 'th' sound in Turkish and many Turks can only make it with much difficulty, much like English speakers confronted with 'kh' as in "Khabarovsk" or "khub.") Living here has given me a more intimate sense of how vocabularies are formed. Like how it's frequently repeated that Inuits have a whole plethora of words to describe what English labels "snow," an extreme (and probably exaggerated) example.
Current fashion among the students at the school requires the boys to wear button up shirts with at least three buttons undone and nothing underneath. If they are one of the greats, perhaps they have an unzipped cardigan hanging from their shoulder like a cape. T-Shirts often carry phrases like "College Athletic Team" stylized to look like a sports team's logo, "much more," and other inanities I have been unable to read.
I have been given a new task beyond talking to the students. My powers of English will now be put towards making menu boards for the cafe with "funky" names for our menu items. At first I protested, making new names seems trivial and they wouldn't fit very well. Then I realized this is my opportunity to create funny English phrases that would make native speakers chuckle. So it's "Groove Salad" and "Disco Soup" from now on! Eat a Break-dance Burger today!
posted by Alex Gray at 15:58
1 Comments:
Thanks for reading! You know, Istanbul is such a mix of East and West (sounds corny I know) but you will just walk down the street seeing people walking their dogs and chatting on cellphones, but then the call to prayer goes up all across the city. Or the cuisine you get at more 'homestyle' restaraunts has a much more Eastern than Western feeling.
The public transportation is also very good here, something much more considered a European trait than a Middle Eastern one.
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