You no speak

Many people in Skypeland are very proud of their linguistic prowess, but it is not always deserved. I was in a room hosted by someone from Turkey who spoke a little English, and a bit of French and Russian as well. He said that it gets very cold in Ankara in the winter. I asked how cold it gets, and he said 10 degrees. Ah yes...freezing.

I asked him about the recent election in Turkey, and asked him if he voted. He did not understand however, and in response he said that he was sick in the bed and had to go to the doctor this morning. The doctor had prescribed some sort of "serum", which I gather included an antibiotic and possibly other medications. The Turkish man was also treating himself with alcohol and hashish. He said he normally does not drink much, but he had become sick after attending a 3 day long birthday party for a friend and drinking for three days straight. Well that might do it... (Interestingly, this man worked as a bartender, but claimed to be a fervent Muslim.)

A man entered from Kazakhstan with a very thick accent. I really could not understand almost anything he said. However, he was very proud of his ability to speak English. He claimed that the reason the Americans in the room could not understand him was that he spoke "reeleeh Eengleesh, propeert Eengleesh", by which I think he meant the English of the United Kingdom. However, his accent did not sound very British to me, just thick and unintelligible. I asked him to speak more slowly so that we might understand him, and he became a bit indignant, but consented to speak slowly for those of us who were so poor in English compared to him. He then spewed a completely incomprehensible, incoherent and unscrutable stream of sounds, in an exaggeratedly slow fashion, "Eet eez pow life let vix ur me tell have too aye you is how it iz where a ooh dobre hun double. Ah bee full emok sog to luke und..." and so on and so forth. I realized that this was basically pointless, since he was so sure that his English was perfect. I suggested he might try Russian instead, since we had some people in the room that spoke Russian, which he did successfully. Then his computer connection dropped and we lost him... Such a shame, since I am sure he had something very insightful to say...