Notorious for their insistence that tourists and expats speak their tongue, the French do help their visitors do one thing: help them learn the language more effectively by allowing learners to walk on the hot coals of their learned tongue. This isn’t their conscious aim of course, that would be cultural pride, mainly.
But in trying to be helpful and friendly, noble aims as they are, the Turks – by eagerly using English — prevent me from stumbling, bumbling through explaining problems. In Istanbul especially, where lots of young people speak the language, people will sometimes ruch to your aid at a store or restaurant, or the clerk himself will insist on using his limited English, which is usually worse than my Turkish. So a kind of silent language war ensues.
Take an example at a Turkish meze (tapas) restaurant recently, I was with a Dutch friend (who doesn’t speak any Turkish), and I was trying to explain that we had ordered one other meze that the waiter had not delivered yet. It is called ezme salata, or just ezme for short, and it is pureed tomato paste with spices and oil in it. I forgot that it was called ezme, so I was trying to describe that it was a spicy tomato dish, like a sauce. A young man, who likely was trying to impress his date, jumped in and said “let me help you!” and proceeded to tell the waiter that it was ezme.
I found myself actually filled with anger despite the fact that he was trying to help (and smugly trying to impress his date at the same time). It was probably wrong of me, but I didn’t even thank him for his help, I just continued looking at my dish, while my polite friend – free of the same complex as me – thanked him for his help. I wanted to bark at him: “Thanks, but I really would rather practice my Turkish if you don’t mind. Jesus!” But I kept silent.
I bet this is a problem well-intentioned, non-French speaking tourists WISH they had in Paris.
Yes, but I am going to call that ‘let-me-jump-in-and-help-you thing’ only QUASI-well-intentioned, because at some level knowing somebody else’s language is about power and one-upmanship. This occurred to me on the ring-Autobahn outside of Munich, where I saw an official highway directional sign IN ENGLISH explaining to benighted GI truck drivers how to get to some big (US) 7th Army facility… I could see WHY German highway officials would do it, but it embarrassed and irritated me. Then I recalled that as you approach San Ysidro on I-5 southbound, at the place where the road diverges because the border-crossing for COMMERCIAL traffic is somewhere else, the big official white-on-green sign is IN SPANISH to accommodate presumably non-English speaking Mexican truck drivers– that seemed progressive and thoughtful and cool to me. So why does signage in English in a furrin’ country annoy while signage in a furrin’ tongue in an English-speaking country not– why the discrepancy? I think its because if you want to speak MY language you’re telling me you’re smarter than I, while if I am speaking YOURS I’m telling you I’m smarter than you. ..Ah, the French. So maybe its just their way of being ‘polite.’