Language negotiation at lunch

[cos]

Last week, at Rami's, the Israeli falafel place in Coolidge Corner...

background: The guys who work there mostly speak fluent English and Hebrew. I'm not sure if all of them speak Hebrew because sometimes I see them talking to each other in English, so I usually approach them with English, but when I do try Hebrew (usually after hearing them talk to each other and confirming the person at the counter speaks it), they're usually delighted.

Esther, Kat, and I are sitting at a table eating. A group of three women walk in and start ordering in reasonably good but imperfect English. They're talking among themselves and ... oh, that's Arabic! One of them, however, apparently has very good Hebrew, so she starts talking to the guy behind the counter in Hebrew. He's delighted, the communication flows, and soon the other two Arab women are doing it, except their Hebrew isn't that good. Little do they know, however, that the guy behind the counter also has reasonably good Arabic... until one of the women asks the other how to say something in Hebrew (asking the question in Arabic), and the Rami's guy answers her. Now they're even more delighted, and the conversation continues in a mix of Arabic and Hebrew, full of "how do you say this?" and "where did you learn Arabic?"

I just listened in amusedly, and told Esther & Kat what was going on after we left. It made my day happier.

Comments

[amare.livejournal.com]

I didn't realize you spoke Arabic.

[missionista.livejournal.com]

Peace and understanding through falafel.

[regorfa.livejournal.com]

That just made my day brighter too! Also, you've got me cravin' Rami's...

[cos]

I don't really - though I want to learn, and someday I'll get around to it. I picked up a few words here and there, in the same way as you'd pick up Yiddish in New York or Spanish in Florida. And it's related enough to Hebrew that I can puzzle some of it out, or randomly get some words through context that I wouldn't have realized I knew.

Father - Hebrew: "aba", Arabic: "abu"
Village - Hebrew: "kfar", Arabic: "kafr"
Pepper - Hebrew: "pilpel", Arabic: "filfil"

There's a lot of vocabulary like that. "Falafel", BTW, is just a modified pronounciation of the Arabic word for "pepper" - that's what they call it.

[whuffle.livejournal.com]

If only all negotiations in those two languages could be so smooth and cordial!

[coraline]

i'm amused that that showed up on my friendslist the same day that this did...

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

I love situations like that, where people surprise each other with their language abilities. There's a whole layer of "understand my language, understand me", I think, which underlies the delight which accompanies the surprise.

[xthread.livejournal.com]

That's excellent

[miraclaire.livejournal.com]

That's really neat!! And now I'm craving Rami's....

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

Yes! Need felafel...

[cos]

Heh, I didn't expect to cause so much falafel-wanting reaction with this post (just 'cause I didn't think about it). It makes me wish Rami's had an Amazon-like referrer program, where I get a cut for everyone who goes from my page to buying their falafel :)

[aroraborealis.livejournal.com]

Thank you for sharing this story -- it made my day happier, too!

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

Oh, I've been going to Rami's for years, though granted not very often since I'm not out in CC very much. They're a real diamond in the rough. Yum.

[lil-brown-bat.livejournal.com]

Aw. Nice story. Thanks for posting it.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

that's nifty.

[cos]

Thanks!

[dscheuring.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of story from Hungary. Esther an I arrived in Budapest late in the evening and, not yet ready to explore, decided to eat dinner at the Taiwanese restaurant next to the youth hostel. The menus there were printed in 8 languages (though I don’t remember what all of them were), but when we asked the waiter if he spoke English he shook his head and started looking around as though trying to find another waiter who might. I then asked him if he spoke German, and he reply (in very good German) "Yes, a little. I know five words in German: yes, no, please, thank-you, and bear!"

the result was very interesting multi-lingual dinning experience where Esther spoke to me in English, I spoke to our waiter in German, he spoke to the head-waiter in Hungarian, and the rest of the staff spoke to each other in what I can only assume was a dialect of Chinese.

[farwing.livejournal.com]

oh! they do go well together...

[australian-joe.livejournal.com]

Hee, that's great.

I am reminded of a story my partner tells of her mother as a young au pair. (I don't recall which country this occurs in.) Her mother and three friends went to lunch, and as a prank they pretended to speak four languages, but such that any language was shared by only two of them.

So if "A" is the language spoken where they went for lunch:

1st person speaks A and B
2nd person speaks B and C
3rd person speaks C and D
4th person speaks D (I don't recall if there was an "E" language as well)

So any lunch communication had to be relayed between successive pairs of them for translation. They apparently did a good enough job, including restricting all chat between themselves to the scheme, that everyone around them were fooled. 8-)

[cos]

When I was dating chanaleh and my father's parents were visiting from Israel, we had an evening at my parents' house where we had to use four different languages, but IIRC every pair of people had at least one language in common. Maybe someday I'll write that up. (we actually had 5 languages going, but we could've done with only 4)

[bouncingleaf.livejournal.com]

Would you get money, or a little falafel? :)

[australian-joe.livejournal.com]

That's great! These sorts of stories always make me happy! 8-)

[cos]

pita. they have the best pita around.

I can only assume

[regorfa.livejournal.com]

that they got the order right.

[diatom.livejournal.com]

Yay! Language stories are happy ones; I've got a story, too.

Basically, this winter break, I kept going back to France because I could wrangle with the language there much better than I could in Germany. Wound up at a hostel where, lucky me, all 3 bunkmates that came through spoke Spanish, and two spoke Portuguese. My Spanish is fluent, and my Portuguese is weak, but passable if necessary (it gets muddled by the Spanish). The one time I met strangers on my way toward the Catacombs, they were Spanish, and we had a grand time chatting through the basement tombs.

Language and music both have this kinda of effect on me...

[listgirl.livejournal.com]

I love love love this story! (i'm stealing it and keeping it forever) it's made my nicely hot, nice (for once) parent teacher conference day even brighter . . but now, I too want falafel

شُكُور
shukran!