Language Barriers

One thing my travel companion and I found particularly amusing while travelling through Italy was our inability at times to adjust to the new language we suddenly found ourselves immersed in.

Although we became absolute professionals in the art of pronouncing 'Ciao!', 'Buonogiorno!' and 'Grazia!' our conversational skills remained limited. Conversations with locals were usually clumsy English-Italian mumblings punctuated by suddenly confident 'Grazia's' with some excessive hand gestures/ interpretative dance moves thrown in for good merit.

Strange things happen to one's native language I find when immersed in a new language and culture. It is like in earnestness to fit in you forget how to speak your own language well but also abandon the hopes of speaking the new language well, settling for strange combination of the two. One time I even found myself unconsciously speaking english to a local but using something along the lines of an Italian accent. Why did I even think that would work? I am not sure...strange things happen!

But we coped! Despite trying hard we did cut some corners:

 Piazza Barberini became simply 'Bombodino'
Galerie Pinocoteca became 'Gallery Pannacotta'
Il Cernacchino ineplibacly became 'La Cuchinella'

and when we went to Paris the fun continued there with Rue de Goeblins becoming 'The goblin street' or even simply 'goblins'.

One night the confusion even entered our own native language when communicating with each other. We had been talking about my books when my friend referred to my copy of Madame Bovary as 'Madame Flaubert'. This I enjoyed very much and will probably keep referring to it that way.

More recently I have noticed that I am developing a strange dialect of English of my own. I will call it 'translators English'. I have been immersed in a beautiful Italian family now for more than a week, and been around Italian locals now for longer than a month. And it is so strange! I suddenly became aware mid-conversation last night that my vocabulary, syntax and articulation has refined itself so much I sound as if I am in a permanent state of translation. The removal of all unecessary innovation, variations, turns of phrase and unusual words has rendered my speech incredibly simple....instead of saying 'Oh look how lovely that bird is!' I find myself saying 'Look. That bird! It is so beautiful!' The other day instead of saying 'I don't like this kind of thing very much' I found myself saying 'This thing, I do not like very much'.

Someone told me this is good, it means I am unconsciously trying to adapt to the new language but for now I remain suspicious and amused.