קציצת ירק

I often buy lunch at the university. Sometimes it's quite easy, but most of the time, the language barrier, or rather, the pronunciation barrier stands between me and my samitch. I have two choices for lunch. I can go to the Sandwhich Guys who have nice kiosk or I can go into the large caffeteria and order something in a pita. I like to spread my shekels around so I try to frequent them equally (though the Sandwhich Guys are a little cheaper and much better). I'm now pretty good at ordering a sandwhich from the Guys. Though I don't use little things like verbs, I know the requisite nouns, adjectives and pleasantries for ordering a sandwhich. Ordering a pita from the caffeteria has proven to be not so simple a task. Having been here for about 3 months, I've grown tired of felafel. As an alternative, I enjoy the patty of friend vegetable matter (latka for all intents and purposes) in a pita. However, I can't call it a latka. Based on my first attempt at ordering this thing, I learned that the woman behind the counter is not Ashkenazi and isn't familiar with the concept. Instead, this latka-like thing is called, and excuse my transliteration, k-tsit-tsat yerek (קציצת ירק).

Go ahead, try to pronounce that. Are you sure? Well, you're wrong. There is a sound in Turkish that I once had to learn. It's a sound that doesn't really exist in English. But the closest thing to it is the "e" sound in the second syllable in "butter". In Turkish it's represented by an undotted i (ı). For those who don't know, in Hebrew there is a "vowel" sound that may be placed under a consonant (:). I thought that it was analogous to the Turkish ı. Predictably, I have been wrong all along. The "k" in k-tsit-tsat yerek is actually much shorter than the Turkish version. It's like quickly pronouncing the silent k at the beginning many English words (k-nock). I learned all of this after several days of discussion of the subject with my friends, Roni and Mara. So, equipped with my new-found knowledge, I presented myself to that same women behind the counter and confidently ordered my fried vegetable mush sandwhich. She not only understood me on the first attempt, but she hand-selected the biggest and most symmetrical of all of fried vegetable mush patties. She also offered the lightly pickled cabbage to me for the first time in addition to the usual Israeli salad, pickles and hummus. You see, it pays to sound like you know what you're doing.