Mastodawn

Story of loveliness for you all because you've been so well behaved recently.

I dated an Italian guy for about 3 months six years ago, and my mum decided it was time to start learning Italian.

The relationship didn't last but my mum never stopped learning Italian by herself in retirement. She's never had a teacher or been to a class; she's taught herself from apps and lots of books I've thrown at her.

She speaks Italian with the strongest English accent you've ever heard. There's no doubt to anyone that she is not a native speaker.

So last week she went to Turin for a couple of days, and she came back *buzzing*. She's been to Italy before and spoken Italian but this time was different.

She was having conversations in Italian with everyone about everything. Basic conversations but she was doing it and loving it.

In one restaurant the waiter couldn't possibly believe that she was an English person speaking this language. English?! English people only speak English! What the actual?! He was so overjoyed at her efforts that he kept bringing her all sorts of free food and limoncello until she asked him to stop.

When I spoke to her a couple of days ago she said it's so weird that you sit at home and learn this language but it doesn't mean anything. It's all nonsense. But then you go to a different country and say the nonsense words and people actually understand you!

I've always loved learning languages and this just warmed my cold, dead heart a wee bit.
#LanguageLearning #Italian #languages

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StuartB Mar 11

@miffyhelen
November 1993, I'm in Rome, and trying to book a seat on a train to... well, anywhere, it was sunday, and it seemed like everything was shut apart from McDonalds and far too many gelato cafes - and there is only so much gelato you can eat in the middle of winter, even if it's shirt-sleeves weather!
Anyhoo, I'm queueing at the ticket office at Roma Termini (the main train station) and the person in front of me was having an argument with the person behind the counter in a way that made me think they were English.
It seriously sounded almost Geordie, and quite a few people in the queue, as well as the guy behind the counter, seemed to be having as much difficulty understanding them as I was.
The man standing behind me was Italian but spoke better English than me (I noticed this all over Europe!), and told me that this was someone from one of the outlying provinces (I forget which one), he even used the word "yokel" to describe how they were commonly portrayed in the Italian media (and thus how they were regarded by most Italians).
And that was how I discovered that other languages have accents as well!

I also discovered that a lot of people, especially in the service and retail industries, are delighted to find that an English person is making at least a token effort, and will happily try to teach you more, before giving up and dropping into English.
Except for the gruff German bloke, who growled "Please stop butchering my beautiful language - speak English instead."

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Iswyrm

@stuartb @miffyhelen You have at least dozen of dialects in Italy, with also variations inside each Region. Even us Italians could not understand a word of something told in another dialect.