A Fellow Expat's Point of View

Let me introduce you to Barksdale Brown. He is another crazy American who traded his comfortable life in the good ol' USA to search for a something new in Italy. He is currently living in Bologna with his wife and children and writes about his Italian adventure in a weekly column for his hometown paper back in Albuquerque, NM. I faithfully read his columns and most of the time I am rolling in laughter.

Here is an example of one of his stories:

In some ways speaking a foreign language is like playing golf. To play golf well you need to know how to swing a golf club, and almost more importantly, you must believe you know how to swing the club.

Speaking Italian is kind of the same. Of course, you have to learn words, verb tenses and grammatical rules, but all the theory in the world is absolutely useless unless you believe you can speak. As a corollary to this rule, it is just as important that your audience also believes you are speaking Italian.

Shortly after our arrival in Italy I had the following conversation with a waiter:

Me: Could we eat flowers?

Waiter: What?

Me (to myself): What is this guy's problem? It was a simple question.

Me (out loud): Could we please eat flowers?

Waiter (smiling and now in English): Sir, do you mean you want to eat outside?

Me: Yes, exactly, (feeling like an idiot for just having confused fuori with fiori.

From that point on the waiter refused to believe that I was speaking Italian, and he was probably right. Of course I preferred to believe that the waiter just wanted to practice his English.

During another meal outing I greatly amused my kids, who were already speaking Italian better than me, by ordering fish juice for them instead of peach juice (pesce instead of pesca). That certainly earned me an interesting look from the waiter.

My wife Kim has also contributed to the local amusement. Once, while hiking with some Italian girlfriends the discussion turned to favorite children's books. Kim, confusing the word for a certain part of the male anatomy with the word for stockings, told her friends that Madi loved "Pippi Longstocking" (cazzo instead of calza). There was a moment of confused silence, followed by howls of laughter. As you might imagine this little slip quickly became the comic highlight of the hike.

Another of my favorites was when Kim was trying to exchange our daughter Madison's ballet shoes for a bigger size. She described the shoes as being witchy instead of tight (strega vs. stretta).

Yup, I must admit that no matter how long Sam and I have been living in Italy, almost 6 years now, or how well we think we speak Italian, cough cough, we still at times make the same mistakes mentioned by Mr. Brown. Of course, you learn to roll with it and keep on trying just like he says. But, imagine Sarah and Anna's plight when Daddy refers to La Befana as buffone (witch for clown), or when their Mommy says boys instead of girls, because I always confuse the masculine and feminine endings.... I could go on and on. It is generally accepted that in the eyes of an adolescent, parents almost always are an embarrassment, imagine our children's burden with us tripping through Italian with their Italian friends....

Here is the link to his column. I know you will soon be a fan too! Click here and get ready to laugh it up with Barksdale Brown.

Divertiti! (Enjoy)

Krista