What bothers you?

Buondì.

The other day I was standing outside my house, rubbing my eyes to counter the effect of too much computer, when one of my neighbours walked by, with her three dogs. The two on leashes came up to me for coccole, the third peered balefully out of his doggy passeggino (stroller, pushchair), to which the poor thing has been confined by illness for the last few months.

Stopping to chat, my neighbor caught me with an unexpected question. It was nothing profound, I’m sure, but because I’d been sitting on my own for hours with a laptop, my head wasn’t ready for it.

Um… um… um… I began, completely unable to articulate even a minimal response. Totally blocked.

Tell me in English, she suggested. I didn’t even know she knew English, but I did, and that worked just fine.

The um… um… um… thing was unexpected, but didn’t bother me, really. It happens quite often when switching languages unexpectedly. At least it’s temporary.

When I know I have to speak, say Swedish (I have an online conversation in a couple of hours), I might do some listening or reading in that language beforehand, to ‘cue up’ my brain. Usually I don’t, though, as I find the saluations and pleasantries at the start of a conversation usually work just fine as a way of telling my brain what it’s supposed to be doing.

In 2021 I had a stroke, the first symptom of which was that I found myself unable to speak at all. I was saying goodbye to some visitors to our school at the time, except I couldn’t, so just stared helplessly at them as they walked away, puzzled at my rudeness. Then I went back to my desk, expecting things to get back to normal. Then I fell down.

After a dramatic ambulance ride to the local hospital (half of which was on the sidewalk, apparently, as there was a soccer match that evening and the streets themselves were impassable), a doctor was asking me questions. Getting no response to Italian, he proudly switched to English. Which didn’t help at all, given that a chunk of my brain had shut down (by this point I was paralysed down the whole right side, too.)

Beh, anyway, it didn’t and doesn’t particularly bother me, not being able to speak. To my surprise, actually, as speaking has been a big part of my life (writing too.) It’s a sort of relief, in a way, and if you can be chilled about it, rather relaxing. Let everyone else do the work, for a change!

But better if it’s just temporary. One thing that isn’t is my lousy spelling. I was never much cop at spelling as a child, being too into reading to worry overmuch about the mysteries of the crazy British English spelling ‘system’ (American English is much better! Go USA!)

But after a previous stroke, nearly ten years ago now, things had really gone haywire. I starting making homophone mistakes (they’re, their, there), like all the time. And while I’ve never been great with double letters in words (‘commitment’, ‘committment’, ‘comittment’?) getting them right became nigh on impossible. I still have to look up some, even simple, words (‘amount’), which I really should know, after nearly fifty years of using them.

That doesn’t bother me much, either, though. In fact, it’s an excellent excuse for when I do make mistakes. It takes a particularly churlish correspondent to point out spelling glitches when they know you’ve been in the stroke unit recently.

That said, it was a reason for upping my proof-reading game, so that the inevitable boo-boos don’t get through to the publication stage very often. That’s just being professional, dodgy brain or not.

Since we’ve had Roomie living with us, and for the first time (really!) in my life in Italy, I’ve spoken Italian on a daily basis. She doesn’t know English, and given that she’ll be released ‘into the wild’, so to speak, needs to speak and be spoken to in Italian.

I’ve been doing my bit, which was hugely odd at first, given that I’d been speaking only English at home for a quarter of a century. But it soon became the new normal. I’m even making horrible jokes in Italian these days! Roomie was being bothered by a fly this morning – a Russian fly. Why Russian? Because it’s come from Moscow (you work it out…)

But of course, given that I never much spoke Italian before, there was a lot to learn. It took me at least six months to learn how to pronounce ‘papà’, with it’s unfamiliar and obstinate stress pattern. I was calling myself ‘papa’ (pope) or ‘pappa’ (a sort of pasta sauce), instead. Bloody double letters, see. Roomie didn’t seem to mind.

And making loads of mistakes – masculine/feminine nounds of course, prepositions, that sort of thing. But hey, I never did an Italian course, I was too busy earning a living, cooking meals, doing chores, and being ‘daddy’, in English, to three young Bolognesi. So, the mistakes don’t bother me.

My pronunciation, people say when they’re trying to be kind, is very ‘English’. No one ever understands if I mean ‘cane’ (dog) or ‘carne’ (meat), though in part that’s because I confuse the article – is it ‘la cane’ or ‘il cane’, ‘il carne’ or ‘la carne’?

Mistakes can combine to cause incomprehension. When I’m not sure, I just guess, which works out well some of the time, but if I’ve guessed multiple things, it can be a problem. For instance when serving ragù to Italian guests, who politely ask the receipe.

So anyway, I have a range of good excuses – well good enough. And therefore don’t feel embarassed, humiliated, or ashamed when something doesn’t come out right.

I can read Italian, I can understand it when I hear it, I can speak it, more or less, I can even write it if I have to, which I often do as my Italian colleagues seem unable or unwilling to. Therefore I refuse, REFUSE I SAY, to get het up about the odd imperfection. Let those of you who never made a mistake hurl the first stone, as the man reportedly said.

What does bother me about speaking Italian, Swedish, Turkish, French, Spanish?

Nothing much, really. I’m used to being unable to do everything I might want to in those languages. That’s more or less the norm when you ‘know’ foreign languages. It’s always incomplete, even for the happily bilingual.

I don’t compare the languages I (partly) know with what I can do in my mother tongue. Instead, I take pride in what I do manage to understand and communicate. Glass half full.

Feeling totally blocked is a bore. But not being too bothered about it is a really useful attitude when it comes to foreign languages. However good or bad you are at Italian, if you’re too embarassed to speak, or too stressed to understand what’s being said, you have an issue.

OK, so what bothers you? And what are you going to do about it?

A venerdì!

P.S. 3 Half-Price eBook Easy Readers from 2021

Don’t forget this week’s half-price ebook offer, on three titles we published in 2021. They cost just £3.99, but only until Sunday 19th March 2023.

As always, I’ll remind people to check out the free sample chapters before they buy. The links are below.

Il ciclista (A2)

A big-city journalist takes a much-needed break in a picturesque Umbrian village. On her first morning there she heads to the only bar for breakfast, and is suprised to find an older man asleep in his wheelchair…

• .pdf e-book (+ audio available free online)
• .mobi (Kindle-compatible) and .epub (other ebook readers) available on request at no extra charge – just add a note to the order form or email us
• 8 chapters to read and listen to
• Comprehension questions to check your understanding
• Italian/English glossary of ‘difficult’ terms for the level
• Suitable for students at any level
• Download your Free Sample Chapter (.pdf)

Buy Il ciclista just £3.99 | FREE sample chapter (.pdf) | Read reviews! | Catalog

Ti racconto la mia giornata (A2)

‘Tell us about your typical day’ is a classic classroom activity for practising the present, describing routines, likes and dislikes, and so on. So here, nine people do!

Read/listen to a nurse, a DJ, a tour guide, a carer, and five more, relating a day from their lives, from the vital issue of what they have for breakfast, to their jobs, their families and friends, and how they relax.

Once you’ve done all nine, test how much you’ve understood (and hopefully learnt!) using the exercises in the final section.

• .pdf e-book (+ audio available free online)
• .mobi (Kindle-compatible) and .epub (other ebook readers) available on request at no extra charge – just add a note to the order form or email us
• 9 chapters to read and listen to
• 9 exercises at the end of the ebook, to check your understanding
• Italian/English glossaries of ‘difficult’ terms for the level
• Suitable for students at elementary level and above
• Download your Free Sample Chapter (.pdf)

Buy Ti racconto la mia giornata just £3.99 | FREE sample chapter (.pdf) | Read reviews! | Catalog

Un giorno da ricordare (B2)

Learn Italian by reading and listening to easy readers (simplified stories).

This ebook contains nine tales of unforgettable days, recounted by memorable characters, with the aim of stimulating you to listen to and read Italian, while offering plenty of exposure to the main Italian past tense!

Topics include a new grandson, getting laid off, a shipwreck, a child’s first ski race, a dream home, a surprise party, a pet dog, graduation day, and losing a cellphone!

• .pdf e-book (+ audio available free online)
• .mobi (Kindle-compatible) and .epub (other ebook readers) available on request at no extra charge – just add a note to the order form or email us
• 9 chapters to read and listen to
• Comprehension questions to check your understanding
• Italian/English glossary of ‘difficult’ terms for the level
• Suitable for students at intermediate level and above
• Download your Free Sample Chapter (.pdf)

Buy Un giorno da ricordare just £3.99 | FREE sample chapter (.pdf) | Read reviews! | Catalog

How do I access my ebooks?

When your order is ‘completed’ (normally immediately after your payment), a download link will be automatically emailed to you. It’s valid for 7 days and 3 download attempts so please save a copy of the .pdf ebook in a safe place. Other versions of the ebook, where available, cannot be downloaded but will be emailed to people who request them. There’s a space to do that on the order form – where it says Additional information, Order notes (optional). If you forget, or if you have problems downloading the .pdf, don’t worry! Email us at the address on the website and we’ll help. Also, why not check out our FAQ?

P.P.S.

Don’t forget to take a look at Tuesday’s bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news, will you?

It’s free, as is subscribing, to get three such bulletins a week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.

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