When I lived in Arkansas, I came across lots of people who had a fit if they encountered any language other than English. In fact one horrible woman was so angered that some of our Walton Scholars were, in her opinion, speaking too loudly in Spanish at the local Taco Bell that she sent an enraged message to our university's Dean of Students to complain. Good thing she doesn't have to move to Kyrgyzstan. She would have to encounter Kyrgyz, Russian, Turkish, Uzbek, and precious little English. I kind of like this odd mix of language. It keeps a person's brain on the move.
Like today, when I went grocery shopping at the big Yimpas market near my house. Yimpas is a Turkish chain of grocery stores and they carry some interesting products that the other stores don't. Like the bag of prunes I purchased. After I brought them home, I noticed my name, Erik, on the package. I did some quick research and found that, fortunately, Erik does not mean prune in Turkish. Erik is the Turkish word for "plum." Kuru is the word for "dried." So I purchased some dried plums AKA kuru erik. I guess one could say that Turkish is an erik of a language. It's a shame that the angry Taco Bell woman and the millions of Americans just like her will never have the fun, however tiny it might be, of appreciating other languages and the play one can have with them.
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