This Season, Behind the Retail Counter, Multiple Languages (and Some
Confusion)

By CHRIS BURRELL

Rafata Jabri, a Jordanian-born pastry chef in Oak Bluffs, knows all
about turning flour, butter, sugar and eggs into delectable treats, but
some other ingredients in the bakery are driving him a little crazy
- a polyglot of Portuguese, Czech, Bulgarian and even Scottish
brogues.

They are the languages and accents heard from his work force at
Martha's Vineyard Gourmet Cafe and Bakery in downtown Oak Bluffs.

Ask Mr. Jabri - whose first language is Arabic - what
it's like running this bakery of babel, and he'll tell you
flat out: "It's hell."

Manning the counters, the mixers and ovens, it's like a
delegation from the United Nations, only no one wears headphones with
up-to-the-second interpreters speaking into the ear.

"Even the Czechs, they say they speak the language, but the
pronunciation of letters at the end of words, you have to go more than
one time to hear what they're saying," Mr. Jabri says
Tuesday night.

"It's tough. With Bulgarian, it's the accent. The
killer is the accent," he adds, wiping his forehead.

But these accents - some of them thick as goulash and others
only faintly tinged with something exotic and far-away - are vital
to the Vineyard labor force, particularly in the summer.

When the Vineyard Transit Authority needed to recruit drivers for
their buses and couldn't find enough manpower on the Island, they
went looking elsewhere. To Bulgaria, as it turns out.

"We have Bulgarians, Brazilians and two Belo-Russians,"
says VTA administrator Angela Grant. "We advertised overseas
because we couldn't get enough workers here."

But what about language barriers?

The international crew at the bus company must pass driving tests to
be hired, a process that weeds out the ones who aren't
linguistically up to par, says Ms. Grant.

"Their English is fine,"she adds.

But a bus driver is one thing. Serving food, taking orders for
double lattes and iced coffees and booking hotel rooms require a lot
more facility with the English language and its nuances.

"Someone asks for two per cent milk, you just hear they want
some milk," says Zuzana Benesova, a 22-year-old from the Czech
Republic who works at BonGo, a cafe on Main street in Vineyard Haven.

Her coworker from Argentina remembers the day a customer ordered a
coffee with room for milk.

"Room for milk? No we don't have room for keeping
milk," she recalls thinking that day, baffled by the request.

Invariably, these are the pitfalls of hiring foreigners, but the
owner of BonGo says it's all worth it.

"There are times when people call and say, ‘I've
been trying to order a sandwich and I don't think they understand
what I'm saying,' " says Robert Cropper.

That kind of feedback might spike some shopkeepers' anxiety
levels, but Mr. Cropper sees a greater benefit.

"To me, it's fantastic," he says, pointing out
that the international flavor of his work force fits the theme of his
cafe, what he calls "a community meeting spot."

He hires the workers - mostly students - through an
international exchange program that screens applicants for English
abilities. Last winter, Mr. Cropper actually traveled to Prague and met
some of his summer employees and recruited more to come over this
summer.

Even with the stamp of approval for their English language skills,
there's still training that needs to be done. "Bacon in
Prague is not the same as bacon here," he says. "Over there,
bacon is ham."

The customers could also show a little empathy. "Americans can
be so impatient," says Mr. Cropper.

"Americans don't realize they should speak a little
slower," says Miss Benesova.

Aside from occasional language snafus, the arrangement pays off on
both sides.

BonGo's seasonal staff from central Europe doesn't bail
out on him come late August. "American students never stay
'til Labor Day," says Mr. Cropper.

"When I get home, I tell my friends, ‘You should go to
Martha's Vineyard because of the money,' " says Miss
Benesova, who is studying physical education and sports management at
Charles University in Prague.

Public transit and the ocean beaches are the other perks, she says.

Behind the counters and in the kitchens, the international labor
force of the Island communicates mostly in English. Miss Benesova says
she can converse more easily with Brazilians than many Americans simply
because Brazilians speak English at a slower pace.

The Bulgarians, Czechs, Slovakians and Russians recognize some
common words since their languages share a Slavic origin. Plus, some of
the older residents of what were once eastern bloc countries studied
compulsory Russian.

"In primary school, we had to learn Russian. When we got rid
of communism, we started with Western languages," says 26-year-old
Magda, a front desk clerk at the Shiretown Inn in Edgartown who asked
that her last name not be used.

Back at the bakery in Oak Bluffs, Mr. Jabri's 19-year-old
daughter, Rasha, isn't troubled at all by language gaps between
herself and others at work. "It's easy. We have sign
language," she says.

Gesturing and pointing take the place of words. Magda theorizes that
living and traveling abroad heightens other communication skills,
enabling some translation absent schooling or a handy dictionary.

"By intonation, you can tell what people are saying,"
she says. "I don't understand Bulgarian or Spanish, but the
melody betrays it."

On the job, though, with three of her Polish friends who also work
at the inn, she is careful not to speak too much in her native tongue.

"If guests are in the office, we won't do it," she
says. And they ask permission of American coworkers before launching
into Polish.

How much cross-lingual learning is taking place is anyone's
guess. Miss Benesova says the cash register is no place to brush up on
English grammar skills. It's just words, she says, like
triple-cappuccino, spoken rapid-fire and divorced from much context.

Mr. Jabri has mastered a couple of critical phrases in Portuguese,
geared toward efficiency in a kitchen - "quickly" and
"don't touch that."

Silviya Kovacheva, a Bulgarian working at Among the Flowers
restaurant in Edgartown, is the only foreigner on the staff. "Here
we're speaking just English," says the 21-year-old student
from Sofia.

It's easier to be around fellow Bulgarians, she says, but far
better to immerse herself in English.

But Mr. Jabri isn't that interested in the bakery becoming an
English classroom.

"Next year. No English, no work," he says.

And by English, he may as well mean American English. "We had
one from Scotland. He was telling me this is English," says the
pastry chef. "That's English? I don't think so."