The Language

No, it's not Chinese or Arabic, or even German, but Italian is a lot harder than I thought it would be. This is the first Latin language I've made great efforts to learn, and these fast-talking Latins are tough to understand.

It helps that there are lots of cognates (arte conccetuale, insalata verde), and even some handy borrowed words from l'inglese (memory card, middle class, non-profit), but, like Chinese, slight changes in the placement of the accent or a change or omission of a vowel result in completely different meanings. My most recent favorite is this: l'oroscopo=horoscope; ora scopo=now I am fucking.

And what makes Italian great to sing makes it difficult to speak: all those vowels. In the first couple of weeks here I watched quite a bit of TV, wondering to myself at every instant, "do I really need to learn this shit, can't I just stick with opera vocabulary?" Every language demands a new voice, and I'm still having trouble finding mine in this one. I try to get in at least a few hours of speaking Italian a day, but with so many Americans, foreigners, and locals used to talking English, it's actually a tall order.

When I speak to someone in Italian, usually the first thing they say is, "do you want to talk in English?" This never happen in Germany. People are trying to be nice, but it makes practicing all the more difficult. Sometimes English will come only after the second or third response. If I didn't hear something or didn't understand, they'll repeat themselves either in English or Italian, at which point I don't know what language to expect and can't understand a thing! But there's one request I hear every day, which even old men know in English: "Do you have a cigarette?" When they're not polluting with their cars and motorbikes, they're smoking.

I've been doing some conversation exchanges with Italians I've found through a website here, and it's been very successful. Most recently, I had a long lunch with a pleasantly nerdy fellow who works at the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, a hideous building near the Circus Maximus with the most spectacular view of the city I've yet seen. It's a very international workplace, and the cafeteria even serves sushi, which is such a refreshing change from the sea of spaghetti options here!

Of course, the best place to learn a language is in bed, but I've resisted the romantic options here. All the stereotypes you've heard about the men are true, and it can be over the top sometime....