I had been sitting alone and bored for hours when a pretty, smiling little Mongolian woman stepped inside my compartment. Unfortunately, it soon turned out that she didn’t speak a word in any other language apart from her
mother tongue. My knowledge of Mongolian was restricted to only bayartai (goodbye), which I didn’t consider suitable to start a conversation.So we looked sadly at each other for a while. Then my companion took out some provisions from her wicker basket and offered me some. The delicious cookies established my good opinion of Mongolian cuisine more eloquently
than any speech. She must have surmised as I turned the pastry in my hand—it resembled our cottage-cheese turnover—that I was racking my brains about how to make it. And that was when the pantomime began. Until the train reached its destination, we exchanged recipes for hours, without exchanging—or being able to exchange—a word. I seem to have correctly “translated” the cooking techniques expressing slicing, breading, thickening, folding, filling, stirring, kneading, cutting, and tenderizing because the meals I learned from this Mongolian woman have since become frequent dishes of my cooking repertoire. And I sometimes imagine with a pleasant feeling that somewhere in Ulanbator a bunch of Mongolian children might be devouring their plates of fried chicken to my health.—Kató Lomb, Polyglot: How I Learn Languages [Download PDF]
This reminds me of when my great-aunt came to visit. She didn’t understand any English but greatly enjoyed watching Wok with Yan every day. I never did ask if she prepared any Chinese stir-fries after she returned home…
