When I started working in Turkey, knowing that I would be there for maybe up to 5 years, I asked one of the local girls on our engineering team, who had lived in the UK and was fluent in English, to teach me enough Turkish to get by.
Why? she said. Thwere are 80 million Turks and 70 million of them live in Turkey, and most of the rest in Germany. Why would you want to learn Turkish? Well, I did, enough to get around, buy meals and drinks, and follow enough of a conversation to know what it was about.
But all, everyday engineering discussions, specifications, drawings, calculations etc were in English. My Turkish engineer colleagues had all been taught at least part of their courses in English, and sat technical exams in English. They were more keen to converse with me in English, a native English speaker, to sharpen their language skills.
I did need to talk to the site labourers in Turkish though, which prompted a number of on-site and time-consuming discussions, them with a Turkish-English dictionary, me with an English-Turkish dictionary. It took time, but we got there. Great fun too. Lovely people.