Turkish Waterloo

Some years ago, I spent a summer working as a dishwasher in a Japanese restaurant in Amsterdam. I got to be pals with the sushi chef, a shy, gentle man who did not speak English. One day, he confided that he had given up trying to learn English as it was too hard to pronounce. I was young and stubborn and believed that I could help him. I asked him what words he found so difficult.

"Some English words sound exactly the same," he told me.

"You mean like here and hear?" He had asked me about these words earlier.

He shook his head. "No, different ones -- words that mean entirely different things."

"Such as...?"

Looking embarrassed, he answered. "Ugly, angry, agree, hungry." He ticked them off on his fingers, considerately adding the Japanese meaning for each one in case I had trouble understanding him. I was grateful for this: he pronounced all four words exactly the same.

At the time, I was halfway through a Master's Degree in Teaching English as a Foreign Language and fired up with teaching fervor. I told him that vowel sounds are shaped by the position of the tongue in the mouth; that some vowels, like the ee in agree are made with the tongue held high, but others, like the uh in ugly are formed with the tongue in a low position. I told him that other vowel sounds were actually a combination of two vowels, or diphthongs, like the a sound in angry. I talked about stress and I demonstrated with examples.

My chef friend listened politely and he was a good sport about playing along. When I wrote out four sentences, he gamely gave them a go.

"I HANGREE with you!" he intoned, brow knit. He licked his lips and made a stern face. "You make me very HANGREE! He frowned and held the paper closer. "Those shoes are HANGREE!" He took a deep breath. "I did not eat lunch. I am HANGREE!"

When he looked to me for approval, I tried to smile. I explained that H is aspirated, that it starts in the back of the throat and is pushed out. I wrote out more sentences and he did his best to pronounce them. And he produced the exact same results.

After about a week, I gave up. The sushi chef smiled and shook his head in a resigned way. "It's really no big deal," he told me. "At least I don't need to use English."

I felt bad, but I couldn't help feeling a little superior too. I'd never had any trouble pronouncing foreign languages. Thank God I didn't have a tin ear for foreign vowels like my poor friend!

Fast forward to now. I am taking roll in a class of twenty-five restless Turkish teenagers, including Gökay, Özlem Çınar, Osman, Unsal, Ünal, and Tufan. I call out Gökay's name and am met by a burst of snickers. Gökay corrects my pronunciation -- "Guuh-kigh, not Goo-kay, tee-cha!" -- and I give it my best, but it only makes everyone laugh harder. Ö, my daughter keeps telling me, is pronounced like the first syllable of Ermintrude, though how this is supposed to help me, God knows; I never have occasion to use Ermintrude in speech.

Osman's name is mercifully not a challenge, but Özlem's thoroughly flummoxes me. I can feel sweat beading up on my neck as I try, again and again, to get the vowel right. Özlem is nice about it -- "It is okay, tee-cha, it does not matter" -- but she is an exception. Çınar and Ünal rub my nose in it.

The sad truth is that while I can sometimes hear the difference between O, Ö, ı, Ü, and U, I can't pronounce them. My daughter, who can pronounce Turkish just fine, finds this hopeless vowel butchery of mine a little exasperating. She cannot see why I can't distinguish between the ı in Çınar's name and the Ö in Özlem's.

Agree, ugly, angry and hungry all sound very different to me. O, Ö, ı, Ü, and U all sound pretty damn close. Sigh: I've reached my own linguistic Waterloo.

Good thing my kid is learning Turkish.