It's official I know just enough Bulgarian to sound like a stalker.  And the worst part is probably not even a very good one at that. You may wonder: Carolyn, how did you decide this how much Bulgarian you know--enough to sound like a stalker? And it's not a bad question because I think that most people measure their language level in terms of the kinds of people one can communicate with--like a four and half year old, a fifth grader or well-meaning grandparents.

Here's how it happened. One of my Bulgarian friends just broke up with her boyfriend and while talking about it over gmail-chat.  She suggested that we could go out soon and flirt with boys together. I said okay. That's what a good friend does. Oh and it's not like I hate going out.

Still, I am not really sure she'd thought this through when she tossed out the idea. I mean I hadn't thought this through and given the fact that I firmly believe you've got to support your friends after they split up with a significant other. I said yes without even thinking about it.

Then I thought about it.
<blockquote>How am I going to flirt with anyone in Bulgarian?!</blockquote>
Hell, I don't think there's any chance that I am going to be anyone's <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wingman">wingman</a> (at least speaking Bulgarian) anytime soon?

Thus my level of helpfulness in going out and flirting with boys is basically zero.  I think the thing that keeps me from being an absolute zero is this I am a warm body and I am quick to laugh and that's got to count for something. This realization caused me to I revise my yes. I told her I thought she'd be able to flirt with boys and I'd just ask boys questions from the first seven chapters of my Bulgarian textbook. She laughed. Then we started talking about other things.

But of course this wasn't the end of this topic, the conversation got me thinking.

Flirting is a cultural thing.<!--more-->

I am okay at flirting in English. It helps that I also like to talk to people.  But flirting is cultural. So it's also important that in addition to my quick smile and love of talking that 1) I actually speak the language, 2) I know American culture, 3) I get the jokes and 4) I can read, understand and interpret the body language. Yep, I just summed up flirting in four points.  I realize it may be a little more nuanced then then but for this post I think the basics will do. Thus, to be decent at flirting you need to have a good grasp of all four of these things--you can probably get by with three of the four but your flirting may not be seamless.  Additionally, I think that a good sense of humor helps when it comes to flirting but it's not mandatory.

So it's pretty clearly that me and flirting in Bulgarian is a lost cause.  I often don't get the humor (let alone most of the jokes), I don't really know Bulgarian culture (I mean I know the history, the basics when it comes to food and music and I've been to my fair share of museums but I'm completely lost when it come to Bulgarian pop culture) and to top all of this off I don't really know the language. .

That's when it hit me.  At my best, someone might think that my flirting was charming or endearing more like an interview for a job than anything else and at its worst, my flirting might come across like stalking. Yeah, I actually think there's a pretty fine line between flirting, being annoying and stalking.  Especially given the fact that I am not sure I can inflect the language appropriately and I don't have a very big range of topics to talk about.

This is where my post comes full circle. (I know, I know <em>finally</em> I am getting to the point).  It's here in this moment that my worry about sounding more like a stalker stems from.  Oh that and the range of conversations I can conduct is fairly limited still. The kinds of questions that I can currently ask include things like: what's your name? where are you from? how old are you? are you married? do you speak the language? where do you work? where do you live? and your family, do you have brothers and sisters? what is his or her name? what are your hobbies? do you like X? do you want X?

I also can ask questions like what time is it? and where is the bus stop? the bank? and the post office? but these questions seem totally inappropriate for flirting.  So I'd save those for when I need them.

As such, I arrived at the following conclusion: if I actually stuck to what I know in Bulgarian at least by American standards I'd probably come off as a stalker.  Or if for some reason I was actually doing mediocre in my attempts of flirting I'd appear overly eager, a poor conversationalist or a little strange.  For the record, I've never hoped to be one of these things (over-eager or strange) but given the options I be happy with this and beer.

Wish me luck.