Can I just say, right from the start, that this is in no way a comment on Turkish culture. I've been here about two months and I would be foolish to even attempt to formulate opinions on the culture of a country in so short a time. Particularly when I still count it an achievement to hear and understand the cashier telling me how much I need to pay at the supermarket without me looking at the till register. So please do not read into this anything whatsoever about Turkish culture.
So, with that caveat over, I've been thinking recently about Asking vs Guessing cultures. This is a concept we came across back in England, when L and I were involved in some work with international students. It's the idea that there are two different types of cultures. In an 'Ask' culture people believe they can ask for anything and don't mind being told 'no' - and in fact often expect to be refused. In a 'Guess' culture, you avoid asking for something unless you're pretty sure the answer will be 'yes' and that it won't be too much of an imposition, especially because it's usually awkward and uncomfortable for someone to have to say 'no'. Ideally, you don't even ask at all but manage to convey the impression without asking that you'd like something and are then offered it, then correctly gauge if it is a genuine offer or just somebody being polite. Of course, this is a somewhat black and white explanation and in reality, if you buy into this theory, there seems to be some sort of spectrum onto which people from different countries fell.
One of the joys of working with international students is learning about different cultures, but one of the harder parts is often communicating when there are different expectations of asking and offering! To give an example, British people tend to fall more into the Guessing camp. You usually don't ask for something unless you are fairly sure you'll receive the answer you want. However, we're not as much of a Guessing culture as some other cultures are, where great subtlety is required. Yet there are other cultures where it is completely normal to ask for something and not expect a positive answer, so an international student may ask a British person something that the British person finds presumptuous or even rude, and the student can't work out what was wrong with their request while the British person finds it awkward to decline. Interestingly, this seems to be something we develop as we grow up - children often innocently ask straight out for something (sometimes to the embarrassment of their parents!).
Personally, I really value the friendships I have where one of us can make requests knowing that the other person feels comfortable enough to say no, but when it comes to making requests of people I don't know particularly well, most of the time I'm British through and through. Although there is enough Yorkshire blood in me to think that sometimes (but only sometimes!) it is worth taking the risk of an awkward moment to try and negotiate a price down.
What has this to do with language learning and timidity?
I think that there are parallels with being from a mostly Guessing culture and language learning because in both cases, you fear imposing on people and what people will think of you.
I don't like knowing that I'm inconveniencing people. I am self-centred enough to worry about what people (who I've never met before and may never meet again) think of me. My pride says that I don't want to need people to go out of their way to help me or to have to find a polite way to refuse me.
But if you are living in a new country and learning a new language, it doesn't matter what kind of culture you live in, you are going to have to inconvenience people. When I walk into a shop, I can pretty much guarantee that I am not going to be their easiest customer that day because I am going to need more time and help than the average customer. It's going to take longer because I often won't understand what is said and will ask them to repeat themselves. I once walked into a shop and, while trying to explain what I needed, had to make the assistant wait while I looked up words in a dictionary. When necessary, we have resorted to pen and paper, photos on phones, Google Translate and/or phoning a friend to translate on our behalf - all things which do not lend themselves to quick and straightforward transactions!
Just as we don't ask for something unless we know the answer will probably be what we want it to be, there's a temptation not to speak unless you know you're going to be understood. You know that when you speak there is a strong chance you will have to repeat what you just said because your accent isn't great and a good chance that even after you repeat yourself, you'll still be met with blank looks. And so it feels like it takes courage to even try and initiate a conversation.
But then there's the fact that we're here to learn a language and you just have to get over it and start talking, plus necessity breeds desperation - if I want a new bottle of drinking water, I really don't have a choice but to phone up the drinking water store and request some water.
However, repeatedly doing this takes a huge amount of mental energy. Sometimes it feels like we have to psyche ourselves up to go and do what would, in the UK, be a very trivial errand and some days it's easy to wish for everything to have a self-service option.
And in the midst of all of this, a friend gave me some words a few weeks back that talk about us not being given a timid spirit, but a spirit of power, love and self-discipline. I've never thought of myself as a particularly timid person (to be honest, I don't think those who know me have ever been tempted to describe me as timid either!) but these last few weeks, I think I've seen in a new way the temptation to be timid. There's a part of me which thinks how much easier it would be to stay in our flat, learning grammar and doing listening exercises, rather than go out and see what conversations I can have just going about my daily life. And that's with the advantage that when I go out with J, people will fairly regularly try and strike up a conversation with me.
But instead, I try and check with the man behind the bread counter what the word is for 'sliced' even though he has resorted to hand gestures the last two times I've been in, as he clearly thinks that is the most efficient way to communicate with me. L takes J to the park and instead of nodding and smiling at the man next to him who is also pushing his son in the swing, L asks the man how old his boy is. Of course, there are also times when we stay in, times when we could say something and we don't, and the other night, we were very happy when we managed to successfully pay our Internet bill online even though we could maybe have paid it over the counter in our bank - but these things are okay too, in the right amounts.
There's so much more I could write about this - about identity, rejection, acceptance, motivation, fear of failure, parallels to other things. But for now, I'm just grateful that I don't have a lot of choice but to get on with things, and more importantly, I'm thankful that I've been given a spirit of power, love and self-discipline.
