|
|
Going to Italy? Learn Some Italian.Apr 10 '01 Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line Your trip will be enhanced if you know more Italian than just Non parlo italiano. I’m good at ignoring sound advice from people who ought to know about things, but this time I took some bad advice out of laziness. Before we left for Rome, I was told repeatedly by people who’d been recently that most Italians speak English and that language wouldn’t be a problem. It wasn’t, really; but I still wish I’d learned more Italian. Even when I bought a book and a tape to help me learn some key phrases my friends said that it just wasn’t necessary. They said that Italians like it when you try to speak a little of their language but that the use of English had become so prevalent that it was almost disappointingly un-Italian. These people are right and they are wrong. You could have a wonderful trip to Italy not knowing anything beyond “Grazie” and “Prego”, but you’ll be sorry if you don’t try to learn some meaningful Italian and here’s why: Misunderstandings can cause minor predicaments. For instance, as a vegetarian, I had a little trouble making myself understood about what I wanted to order in restaurants. I had memorized, “Non mangio ne la carne ne il pesce,” but on a few occasions ended up with pasta dishes that had meat in the sauce or fish in the ravioli. Vegetarianism can mean different things to different people; if you speak only a limited amount of the language it’s hard to convey what you mean when the words you know aren’t enough. And even though many Italians speak some English… …if you can’t meet them half way, you’re never going to have a genuine conversation. Sure you can make yourself understood; but at what level? We met some wonderful English speaking Italians, like Mauro, the Roman guide that we’d hired to show us around the city. Mauro was as fluent in English as anybody we met, and he explained history, art, and architecture to us in such an eloquent, personal way that we learned more than what we would have thought possible and liked him very much. But as we began more familiar conversations, we often realized that neither Mauro nor (of course) we had the vocabulary to make each other understand the fine points of a topic, and here is where we missed out. Mauro was a very interesting man that I would like to have known better. And he was a guide who studied English to give English speaking tours so it was relatively easy with him. If you have no guide and you… …get lost in Rome and it will be in the one neighborhood that has no English speaking people to help direct you to your hotel. We were actually trying to find our way out of Rome. Our Hotel had given us clear directions in English. We had an excellent map. What could go wrong? Well, nothing really earth shattering did, but getting lost in Rome wasn’t the most amusing hour of my life or my favorite vacation memory. The thing we didn’t count on was not knowing what many of the street signs meant. Was that a detour? Is this a one way street? Does that mean that we need to go through the tunnel or bypass it? And once we were lost we were really lost. People on the street wanted to help but we had a hard time finding somebody who spoke English. We knew where we were on the map, but there was something, and I’m still not sure what, that prevented us from following the route the way it specified. I’m sure people were trying to tell us the reason; but, of course, we couldn’t understand enough Italian. Using the “wandering around for a long time” method that my husband is so fond of, we finally found our way, and this might work for you too. But this was just one instance in the five days we were in Rome, and… …if you visit small towns you might not ever find anyone who speaks English. Case in point: My husband’s Grandfather grew up in a little mountain town near Naples and we wanted to go there and see if we could find any cousins. Here, no one could help us. We must have seemed so strange, wandering around trying to make ourselves understood with a phrase book called “All the Italian you will Need to Know.” I found myself speaking too loudly (like that was going to help), and saying the same thing over and over, even when nobody understood it (like that was going to help). At one point, instead of asking an old woman what a ruin was, I asked her what it cost. I will never again think any joke about foreigners trying to speak English funny. And if you don’t know any more Italian than what it in the book, “All the Italian You Need to Know”, like me, … …you’ll be the half-wit who can only speak in the present tense. I tried to prepare myself in advance with words and phrases that I thought would help in the search for family members, and they did help, but only in a limited way. Ultimately, I did communicate, but as my daughter pointed out (my teenage daughter; my getting too big for her britches seventeen year old), I must have sounded like a cave man speaking Italian. I didn’t have the language to say the normal niceties one might use when asking a stranger for directions. (“Excuse me; I’m new in town. We’re here looking for a family by the name of…” and blah blah blah.”) Instead, I found myself zeroing in on friendly looking people, walking over to them, and haltingly asking (in a bad accent), “Excuse me, what is that?” or “Hello, where’s the priest?” like I was interrogating them or something. And then came the biggest problem. What does it matter if you can ask a couple of simple questions but can’t understand any of the answers? Trying to converse with somebody with no language in common is surprisingly exhausting – and embarrassing, and unfortunately… …you’ll never know if they are making fun of you. If you are the big dork who knows about a dozen words and can only speak in the present tense; if you ask questions in Italian that you are only going to understand if the answer is in English, people should be making fun of you. And in the end… …you’ll feel rude for putting the entire burden on them. I was in their country and they had to speak my language? I don’t know; maybe they really didn’t care but I started to feel a little foolish. I could have tried harder. I was too lazy. Bottom line: You can have a wonderful time in Italy and not speak a word of Italian the entire time. I never met a single person that seemed put out by my inability to communicate, but still, I’ve already started trying to improve my Italian for the next time I go. I’m convinced that the Italian people that I meet will respect me more and like me better, and I will have so much more fun. A piu tarde! Ciao!  |
| Read all comments (6)|Write your own comment |
|
Ads by Google
|
by knotheadusc
by artemis8
