Talk Turkey [E]

Talk Turkey ありのままに話す

05:15

Words and Their Stories -- a program about special American expressions.

It is not always easy to learn how some expressions become part of the language or where they come from. Those writers who try to tell us often do so with few hard facts but with a lot of imagination. And so, what comes down to us is often questionable. This is especially true of the American expression, "to talk turkey." which has nothing to do with the situation in Cyprus. "To talk turkey" means to talk straight openly and honestly without hiding anything. There was a time when the phrase meant to talk pleasantly. In 1864, for example, a Connecticut newspaper complained that many people were talking turkey to returning soldiers and robbing them at the same time.

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In time, this meaning changed. How and why is not known although writers tell this story:

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A white man and an Indian went hunting together one day after agreeing to share what they brought back. At the day's end, they came back with just two birds in their bag. One was a turkey weighing more than 20 pounds. The other was a partridge no bigger than one's hand. The white man had his eye on the turkey and thought he could trick the Indian into giving away his claim to the big bird. This is how he would do it. He would show what a nice guy he was, and the Indian, therefore, would try to be just as nice, maybe more so. That was what the white man thought, and so, in a great show of fairness and generosity the white man said to the Indian.
"Now you can take the turkey if you wish, and I will be happy to take the partridge. Or you can take the partridge if you want to, and I'll take the turkey."
But the Indian was not as stupid as the white man thought. He saw through the white man and his phony offer. "Ah!" said the Indian. "A11 the time you talk turkey to me. Now, let me talk turkey to you."
And that is how the expression, "to talk turkey," came to mean to talk openly, to get down to business, to get the facts.

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If you do not believe that story, well, here is another one. This one comes down to us from an earlier time. We are told how the early settlers in America acted when they first saw turkeys. They could not take their eyes off the big birds. Thousands of them filled the fields with their throaty noise. The size and appearance of the turkeys surprised the men, and so did their behavior, especially during mating season. The turkeys were direct and aggressive in their demands. There could be no mistake about what they wanted. Their mating calls left no room for doubt. This, the men felt, was indeed "talking turkey." The settlers even learned how to make the turkey mating call, so they could catch one of them for dinner.

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Be that as it may, this sounds like a tall tale -- a story much larger than life. There are other stories about "talking turkey" that are even larger, but that is the way it is with the history of many expressions. They come down to us through time, changing now and then by the imagination of men only to end up firmly in the language with their own special flavor, or perhaps to die as suddenly as they were born.

Voice of America

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