Perche Parlo Italiano? Because I want to…
Sunday, May 20th, 2007
Photo: Inside the Blue Grotto on Capri
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There are few times in life in which you simply get to do something which there is no ulterior motive except for pure pleasure. The thought of taking language classes in Italy seemed adventurous, exotic, and glamorous – like riding the Orient Express, riding a camel in the Sahara, or sailing around the world. However, I met a woman recently who asked me why I chose to learn the Italian language. She felt it was an odd choice for me since I wasn’t working or living in Italy, nor did I have family ties here, nor did I work for a company that had any association with Italy. She told me she knew a woman with a similar background as me who wanted to take Italian, but decided upon Spanish instead because it was a more useful language. I gave her question and comment some thought, there was a bit of silence, and then I answered her, “Because I want to.”
It was a good question – one that I’ve given some more and more thought to since our initial conversation. Sure – the sensible thing would have been to take Mandarin or Spanish – I could put it on my resume and try to sell my international experience. All of my life I had been making the sensible choices…majoring in accounting, getting an MBA, changing jobs for more money and promotions, working on a project because it would look good on my resume, and making sure that I went to the right networking events. However, the choice to spend a great deal of money learning to speak Italian – well – it wasn’t necessarily the sensible choice – yet making a decision purely for your own pleasure…now that’s exhilaration. It’s like crossing the finish line of a marathon, a pure drug flowing straight into your veins, a high like no other. How many of us really get to do what we want to do…not many. The fact that I probably wouldn’t even use what I am learning much beyond this trip…didn’t matter to me…I was simply doing what I wanted to do…not what I should do.
However, doing what you want to do is not always easy…I am reminded of that as I struggle through my Italian classes every morning, yet I am not alone. I have classmates that also do varying degrees of struggling with me. We bond over conversation class when we have no idea what our teacher, Nunzia, is saying. Nunzia has this habit of showing us a picture and asking us what the different things on the picture are called in Italian. We have not learned the Italian word for mouse, but she’s pointing at the mouse and asking me what it is called as if I should know. This frustrates the hell out of me as there’s no way that I can get it right so I make up words – I try il mouso or fromaggio-mangio-rodento. If she had already taught us the word, and then asked me what a mouse was – at least I would have a chance. If I didn’t get it right then I could only blame myself for not studying enough, but when I never knew the word to begin with…well…there’s just no winning…and I hate losing. I also dislike it when I am learning words that I feel like I will never use. How often do I use the word mouse in a sentence…maybe once every 2 months at best. It is a fact that your brain can only consume a limited amount of new information at one time…so you want to make sure that you are filling it up with the right vocabulary. Vocabulary that you will use – like today, next week, beer, wine, food, sleep, run, travel, good, bad, and no thankyou. Mouse just doesn’t fit into the upper tier of vocabulary words for me. Therefore, I choose to let it go in one ear and out the other with no guilt – I don’t even want it to stop and look around in my brain as it might muddle something else up in there and then I won’t be able to remember the word for beer. Therefore pocket, eyelash, rabbit, and mouse just make a roundtrip through my brain, never to be thought about again.
I walked around the first day I arrived and became familiar with Sorrento. I was elated as I explored…what a beautiful town I was able to live in for a month….I must really be the luckiest person in the world. My new daily schedule would be to attend 2 hrs of grammar classes a day, 2 hrs of conversation classes a day, and 4 hrs of cooking classes plus dinner afterward on Mon-Wed-Fri. I was also pleased to find out that my ‘cooking school package’ that I signed up for also included an additional 3 nights of dinner at the cooking school. Therefore, I practically lived at the language school every morning, and at the cooking school every night. I had a schedule…places to be, things to do, people to see…responsibilities for the first time in 8 months! I was rather excited about having a schedule again…about as excited as I was about having a closet! By putting my travel on ‘pause’ for a month, this also meant that I would be able to get some semblance of a running schedule again. This was absolutely necessary since I was to be eating a 4 course Italian meal 6 nights a week…Mama Mia! 
Photo: Dubrovnik Old Town at Sunset