Beer and Yeddis

"Bir."

"Beer," says I.

Later... "Yedi."

"Yetti," says I.

Ah! The marvels of learning language! Today I had my first unofficial Turkish language lesson with a friend, who taught me my numbers, polite sayings, and the every popular, "I don't understand." As I struggled over how to remember the number one, (bir), the only thing that came to mind was "ONE bottle of BEER on the wall..." Then I stumbled over seven, trying to figure out how I could remember that seven is 'yedi.' My roommate shouts out, "Bigfoot has seven toes!" Don't ask me HOW remembering that a yetti has yedi toes will help me remember the number seven, but somehow I think it might.

I went to the grocery store to buy a few items, and thought I'd practice numbers by repeating the price back to the cashier. Turns out, my total was 18 million lira, the one number I'd learned before today, and had recognized in the Bazaar. Ah well. The cashier was pleased with my obvious effort to say, "Hello, 18 million, thank you, hello, oops I mean, good evening!"

I can now count to ten in spanish, portuguese, italian, malayalam, and turkish. Call me a linguist, or maybe a three year old in any country outside the US...