Rooz Rozhd, Effendi!
There is a fruit and vegetable shop in our little town, and I knew that the owner and his wife were from Turkey, but that doesn't tell their ethnicity, just the nationality listed on their passport. I tried my few words of Turkish on him years ago, and he explained that while he understood it, he was a Kurd, and from a small area where they spoke a dialect that varied from "standard (to the extent that there is even such a thing)" Kurdish.
I recently sent my wife there to pick up some special French apricots when I had to be on the road, and she explained who her husband was (i.e. the guy from Texas who was trying to learn some of their Kurdish dialect). Ah! So YOU are the wife of Effendi.
Now, everybody in Turkey is Effendi. That's basically a polite form of address. A glorified "mister," if you will. But they don't call Germans Effendi, just their acquaintances from "the old country." And now me. I promise you, in Texas, no one addresses anyone as Effendi.
I always get an extra apricot thrown in, or a few cherries, or whatever, and consider it an honor to be the only European (to them, we all are) to be addressed as Effendi. In Turkish, they say iyi günler, and in Kurdish, it's rozh bazh. But in their particular of Kurdish, it's rooz rozhd. And wes beh! (Thanks!--the apricots are pure heaven this time of year!)
= new reply since forum marked as read
The Farmer's Market I go to has a vendor that grows organically grown fruits and now they have apricots.
I have never had such flavor! I can't even describe it. I have to eat them while I stand over the sink, since they are so juicy when I pull them apart.
Congrats on becoming Effendi! A mark of honor.
