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."