Parli Italiano?
Parli Italiano?
People often ask me if I speak Italian, and I never know what to say.
I do, but the language I know is broken at best.
The language of my childhood seeps back into my vocabulary in fragments while I eavesdrop on tourists at a restaurant visiting another city or listening to a language-based podcast.
I sometimes dream in Italian, the phrases and words weaving their way into my subconscious. The Sicilian dialect stitched into my muscle memory from the slips and knots of my grandmother’s crochet needle. She would speak to me in her regional tongue, sharing soap opera updates while I sat beside her on the sofa, eating milk and cookies.
By the time I started learning Italian in high school, the modernized version of the language had become widely standardized. Teachers would look at me strangely when a dialectic word slipped into the rote responses to their questions. Disgrazia, so embarrassed by the mistake, I censored myself.
Later, after being tested on the phone by la professoressa, I enrolled in a conversational literature class. The course involved reading Un giallo con investigativo and discussing it in person bi-weekly. I struggled through those twelve weeks, reading about the gumshoe detective and flipping through an Italian-American dictionary for every other word. The in-person sessions were equally disastrous–perso a un’isola.
I soon realized that I understand others if they speak slowly, which was nearly impossible to find in the circle I traveled in. So, I resigned myself to language apps like Duolingo and Babbel and watched Italian programs on Netflix—my favorite is La guida astrologica per cuori infranti—to remind myself what live discourse could be like.
On my last trip to Sicily, I was traveling with a friend, and by the third day, our conversations were lost in translation. I had no idea when my conscious brain crossed over to Italian, and before long, it was he who couldn’t understand a word of what I was saying.
The comfort of being home ignited the language of my ancestors and awakened the linguist inside, and I can’t wait for it to happen again.
