cultural-linguistic lacunae

Yesterday evening I made the acquaintance of a charming young gentleman by the name of Arslan. (A good Turkic name ["lion"] for a fine Tatar boy!) He lives in my apartment building, two floors up. When we met in the courtyard, he giggled, then cooed, raised one eyebrow quizzically, and burst into tears, upon which his mother took him inside for his evening bottle. During this whole interaction I was at a loss for words, pretty much reduced to making cooing sounds myself.

I had this problem last year in Turkey with my young neighbors Yiğit (7 months) and Cennet (2 years): I have very little idea of what one is supposed to say to babies in other languages. Obviously, the babies themselves don't much care, but their parents have their expectations. Talking to babies in front of their parents is a pretty highly scripted act in any language, so it's easy to screw up and sound silly (or be insulting!) if you don't know what's going on.

By observing my host mom and sister with Yiğit and Cennet, I learned that "Yerim, ya!" ("I am going to eat you [because you are so cute]!") is a common baby-exclamation in Turkish. One can also exclaim "Çirkinsin!" ("You are ugly!") to a baby, as a means of expressing pleasure at its adorableness and simultaneously deflecting the evil eye (which is always out to harm the beautiful, lucky and successful). Much later, when I was no longer interacting with Turkish babies, we had a sentence in grammar class at Georgetown that translated as, "The baby's legs were so plump that there came to me a desire to bite them." So in general, it seems that a good Turkish baby = an edible baby. Compliment parents on their children's tastiness, and you're good to go.

Somehow, baby-talk has been notably absent from my (much longer!) Russian education. Perhaps the vastly different birthrates in Russia vs. Turkey play a role? I wanted to compliment Arslan on his big, expressive eyes, but I faltered - can baby eyes be called glaza, like grownup eyes, or do they require a diminutive suffix, to become glazki or glazonki? Does one call a boy baby "handsome" in Russian and compliment him on his masculine characteristics ("little man", "so big and strong!"), like we do in English? And are Tatar babies as susceptible to the evil eye as Turkish ones? I plan (only sort of kidding, here) to observe the courtyard babushki with Arslan for the rest of the summer and compile field notes.