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A night in Turkey

By Tom, founder of Three Smiles

The waiter had just cleared my plate. I looked up and said, “Teşekkür ederim.” Thank you. Nothing more.

He stopped. He asked if I was Turkish. When I said no, he put a hand on my shoulder, the way you might with an old friend, and smiled.

That was Marmaris, late summer 2026. As I was leaving, he came back over to me. “Cheers, guv,” he said. It was his way of saying he had noticed. Everyone else in the restaurant had spoken English. I was the one who had tried.

French, and not much else

I have A-Level French. It is the only other language I can hold a conversation in.

I lived in Wales for 25 years and never managed to learn Welsh. It shares so little with French that I had nothing to hang it on.

I have tried all the language apps, more than once. I start with good intentions, but I am just repeating things into a phone. I am busy. I lose my streaks. I mix words up. Then I go somewhere real and I struggle to remember any of it, or the words come out in French.

A smaller habit

So I stopped trying to learn languages. Instead, in every country I visit, I learn three phrases: hello, thank you and cheers.

It sounds too small to count. It is not. Most travellers speak English and expect English back. They do not attempt even those few words. When you do, you stand out, in the best way.

I had seen it before. In France, “Santé” got my round of drinks on the house. In Bali, “Om Swastiastu”, the local greeting, got me the best view in the restaurant. I do not tell these stories to promise free drinks or better tables. The point is the second after you say it. People look at you differently.

The bar

That week in Marmaris, I ordered an Efes at the bar. The lady serving raised a glass and said “cheers”, in English, the way she probably says it to British guests all day.

I raised mine and said, “Şerefe.”

She stopped. She did a double take, as if checking she had heard right. Then she smiled. Not the polite smile that comes with the bill. A real one.

The ice was broken, so I asked her how to say hello. “Merhaba,” she said, and she was happy to teach me. She remembered me every night after that, and every night she let me practise again.

I did not say anything clever. My accent was not perfect. What she heard was not really the word. It was the effort. Someone had bothered.

The screenshots

There was one problem. For years I had kept my three phrases as screenshots. Every trip added a few more, buried in my phone between beach photos and boarding passes. When I needed one, I was scrolling past sunsets to find it.

Translation apps are brilliant for menus and signs, but they put a phone between you and the person. And neither a screenshot nor a translation tells you where the stress falls. That is exactly where the fear of getting it wrong lives.

The moment

Turkey was where it clicked. What I really needed was an app that gave me the three phrases for whichever country I was in.

So when I got home, I designed and built one. It was for me. Then I showed it to other people, and they said they would use it too. They had seen the same problem.

What it does

Three Smiles gives you hello, thank you and cheers for wherever you are. Every word has its pronunciation underneath, with the stressed syllable marked, and where your phone has the voice, it can say it aloud. It works offline, so you do not need a signal. In a few places where raising a glass is not the custom, the third phrase is goodbye.

It is not a language course. There are no lessons, no streaks and no homework. It is not a translator either. You will not hold a phone up between you and the person in front of you. The phrases are yours to say.

I kept it to three on purpose. Three phrases cover the moments that matter on a trip: arriving, being helped and celebrating. Any more and you would forget them by the airport.

Where it started

I still cannot hold a conversation in Turkish. I can make someone smile in it.