Will and I are in our last few days of class and I can't quite say I'm anywhere near fluent. I think, actually, the little Italian I've learned has brought me no closer to communicating here in Rome, but it has erased any bits of Spanish that I've managed to retain lo these many years.
I know it takes time... it took me over seven years of studying Spanish in school and a little immersion in a Spanish-speaking community (restaurant work in NYC) to be able to discuss my missing luggage at a Mexican airport. I feel comfortable cutting myself a little slack for not being able to discuss politics or shoe-shopping in Italian with the same fervor I can in English.
But... we've got a little bit of a deadline on our hands now, and it's pretty much all my fault. Will's mom arrives in a few days. I asked her myself if she, a native Italian speaker, wouldn't mind speaking to Will and I only in Italian during her stay. She basically said that to speak in Italian all the time would be difficult, but that we should do it at meal times. Will and I tried that trick. We got lazy. The furthest we've extended ourselves lately is to choose the Italian menu over the English version when offered.
I reminded Will over some really great pizza tonight that I had thrown this gauntlet down and... well, it wasn't quite a full-on "silent treatment", but I was definitely given the "well, look what you've just gone and done" treatment.
I took a little solace in "what I've gotten us into" when the American couple next to us in the restaurant completely butchered any semblence of Italian when ordering their meal. And then the lady did that thing that many people do when they're trying to communicate with someone who doesn't speak their language:
Waiter: Caffe?
Lady: Uh, yes. AMERICAN COFFEE. AMERICAN. COFFEE. AMERICAN.
Husband: I'll have a cuppa cheeno.
Lady: OH, OK. A CUPPA CHEENO FOR ME TOO.
It's like people who yell at the deaf. Why?
I will speak this language if it kills me. And it just might...
1 comment:
ho capito.
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