Now, THAT is the Way to Learn Italian!

Diario di Roma Tre
Saturday April 8, 2017
Mostly Sunny 60°F/16°C in Roma, EUR, Italia 00144
Partly Cloudy 80°F/27°C in Cedar Park, Texas 78613
Buongiorno,                                                              
       Fluency in a language not my own has always been an elusive goal for me! I took two years of Latin and one year of French at dear old Riverhead High before I graduated back in 1958. I also

Learning the Language!

MikeBo and Monica

took a year of Spanish in college, and I picked up some random words and phrases of German on several trips to Deutschland. Then there were the Czech words and sentences that I picked up during our family visits to Pittsburgh and listening to my dad talk to his parents in Bohemian. Add to that the fact that a lot of the last names in my home town end in ski, or wicz or even ska, and you can figure that I also got started on Polish!   So while I can dine in most any European restaurant and order anything from les legumes, pommes de terre, kielbasa, schnitzel mit sauerkraut, spaghetti Bolognese or huevos rancheros, I am hard pressed to be able to hold a conversation in any of the French, Spanish, German, Polish or Czech that I’ve picked up over the years. So, when my son Michael met his future wife, Laura in London (where another foreign language is spoken) and eventually followed her back to her native Rome, I finally had all the incentive to learn another foreign language - ITALIAN.
       So now, after about half a dozen trips to Italy, I am mulling over a retirement plan that involves living part of the year in Texas where I am already near my daughter and my five grandchildren, AND, spending part of the year near my son and his family.  If that happens I will need to be more conversant in Italian than I am now. I do possess a nodding acquaintance with some of the basics. At least I can say hello and goodbye, which is Caio! either way, and grazie! (Thank you), and the all-important Dove il bagno? (Where is the bathroom?) I even signed up for a class in Conversational Italian at Austin Community College.  At least, I’ve gotten started. But, Cara mia, I have a long way to go before I’m taken as a real Italiano!
      When I arrived back in Rome last month, Michael told me that he had arranged to pair me up with a local student who is trying to learn English. We would be able to help each other learn the other’s language. Michael, who teaches Business English to Italian business people professionally at a Rome school, explained the process to me. It’s the least expensive way to learn the language, he told me. The two of you schedule a time during several days a week and you teach your partner English for half an hour. Then, the other person teaches you Italian for half an hour. It’s a language exchange. And, in Roma, it’s a popular and inexpensive way to learn another language. And so, two days later Michael and I met a Rome career woman named Monica Manganiello for lunch at a local Trattoria. Interpreting for both of us, Michael walked us both through the first lesson and gave us each some written material to work with, and then told us, I will be present only for the first lesson to get you started. Then, you will be on your own. Monica and I looked at each other, panicked. Then we persuaded him to help us out at least once more.
        By the next lesson, we were better organized. Michael had given us a lesson plan, and I had given Monica my Kindle reader with a phrase book and an Italian-English dictionary to match the ones I had on my IPad. In addition, we both had a Google Translator on each of our IPhones.  Then, it was sink or swim. We were to meet for our luncheon lessons by ourselves. That we did the following Tuesday at the trattoria near Michael’s school. Over the next several lessons we became better acaquainted. Using my dictionary and translator I was able to tell her that – Sono nato a New York. Io sono di California. Abita in Texas. ( I was born in New York, from California and now living in Texas). She in turn told me that she lived in Rome and worked for a Chinese owned company and had been to New York on a vacation. Ah! I exclaimed. Since we were both thinking of Manhattan when we mentioned New York, I asked her, Dove hai alloggiato a New York, (where did you stay in New York?) She replied, Ho alloggiato in una zona chiamata “cucina dell’inferno.” (I stayed in an area called Hell’s Kitchen!) I laughed out loud at that. Hell’s Kitchen is a gentrified former slum area on Manhattan’s west side that was once the fiefdom of Irish gangs. I asked her what street her hotel had been on. It was in the west 50s and she could see the Hudson River. I told her that when Mike and Laura came to New York to get married, I had rented an apartment just ten blocks north of where she was. From that experience Monica learned she needed to learn better English for her next vacation in America. Dove vuoi visitare durante la vostra prossima vacazione gli Stati Uniti, I asked. (Where will you visit on your next vacation in the U.S.?) Without hesitation, she replied, Mi piacerebbe visitare in California! I don’t think that needs a translation.  
      After our lunch time lessons we both check in with our instructor, Michael, via the chat room he has set up for our little class. We have agreed to continue this after my return to the states via Skype or Facetime or one of the other internet services and we can stay in touch with our teacher. I plan on returning to Austin Community College in the Fall, so I will have new lessons to share with Monica. For our last lesson, we shifted our class across the street to the gelateria across from the trattoria where we had met the  previous time. Do you like ice cream? She asked. When I said yes, she pointed to the Gelateria across the street across the street. I don’t feel like lunch. I would just like an ice cream. Would you like one? And, that, gentle reader is how my Italian class came to be located where it is now.          
Ciao!
MikeBo

[Mike Botula is the author of LST 920: Charlie Botula’s Long, Slow Target!  (Amazon Books)  MikeBo’s Blog is a wholly owned subsidiary of his web site www.mikebotula.com

© By Mike Botula 2017

[1,136 words]