Double Speak

How English and Italian duke it out in my head, and some ways to win the battle

Conversation, Neapolitan style. Photo © Cheryl A. Ossola

If you read my last post, you know I was in Spain, or more properly, Catalonia, recently. It was the first time I’d dealt with a language other than English or Italian in many years, and the resulting feeling of discomfort made me realize how much my Italian has improved since I moved to Italy. So I want to talk about what that learning arc looks like, as well as offer some strategies I find helpful. (Oops, I guess I just lost all my readers who aren’t learning Italian. Come back next week!)

Obviously this is all very personal, and your mileage may vary. My Italian hovered around an A2/B1 level when I arrived, and now I’d say I’m a high-level intermediate—a solid B2 with forays into C1 on a good day. I mention this only to give you a reference point for the observations I’ll make about my learning process.

Several things have changed since I was a lower-level learner. The most maddening (but ultimately with a good payoff) is that instead of seeing a steady progression of improvement like I did in my days of learning basic vocabulary and verb conjugations, my proficiency arc will stay flat for a long time, then jump up significantly. It’s cool when that jump happens, though sometimes I despair of ever seeing improvement.

Another maddening result of delving into more sophisticated language is that I regress in other areas—in other words, the more I learn, the more I forget (though in the long run the net result is positive). Take gender, for example. Words I learned ages ago suddenly become mysteriously gender fluid, to the point where I can’t rely on my fallback strategy of asking myself if the word sounds right because both genders sound right. I cannot say vehemently enough how much I hate this.

The coolest change I’ve noticed is that I translate less. I’ve often described my writing process as “turning off my brain,” and it works with Italian too. The more I try to figure things out, the more mistakes I make (not that I don’t make plenty even when I’m blabbering on without translating). I no longer try to structure my sentences like English ones, and I’m getting better about using pronominal verbs, which, let me tell you, make all the difference in terms of both comprehension and speech.

What’s a pronominal verb, you ask? It’s a verb + pronoun/s combination that gives the verb a different meaning than it has normally, without the pronoun/s—for example, the pronominal verb andarsene means to leave, not the usual meaning of andare (“to go”). Another example: farcela, which means to manage to do something (as opposed to fare, which means “to do” or “to make”). So if I do something, I say, in the present tense, “Lo faccio,” but if I manage to do something, indicating a certain effort, I say, “Ce la faccio.” (Don’t ask about the ce; you really don’t want to know.) If this stuff rings your bell, check out this video.

One of my personal yardsticks for my own proficiency (which varies from day to day and even moment to moment) is my use of the subjunctive mood. The subjunctive isn’t used much in English; you might say something like, “If I were more fluent in Italian, I’d get a job,” and that’s about the extent of it. Basically, it’s used to express a desire, wish, suggestion, or demand. Italian, however, glorifies the subjunctive (congiuntivo). I mean, there’s an entire 160-page workbook devoted solely to this complex, pesky (but ultimately satisfying to use) mood. I have the book, called Congiuntivo, Che Passione! and I’m here to tell you passione isn’t the descriptor that comes to mind. “Che cazzo” might work, or “che pezzo di merda.”

Anyway, despite its difficulty (there are like a million conditions in which the congiuntivo is required, and every teacher I’ve had says even Italians get it wrong rather frequently), I like using it. In the last two years I’ve gone from never using it (rest assured you will be understood without it) to using it maybe half the time. Okay, maybe 40 percent of the time. Okay, maybe 30. What’s cool is that even if I can’t always deploy the congiuntivo on the fly, most of the time I know when it’s needed. I can hear it, and that makes me insanely happy.

These kinds of experiences and frustrations (and more) are well described in this article on BBC Future, called “How Our Brains Cope with Speaking More Than One Language.” It talks about intrusion errors, of either vocabulary or accent, of the dominant language. To speak a new language, you must suppress the native one. This is particularly true for adult language learners who grew up speaking only one language; they have to constantly fight the intrusion of their native tongue, which comes all too easily and automatically.

The suppression/intrusion dynamic is a tricky one, and sometimes the tables get turned—as the new language is used more, the once-dominant language gets suppressed to the point where (if you’re me) you can’t remember English words. Heck, sometimes I can’t think of a word in either language, but I usually chalk that up to age—though my quadrilingual friend has the same problem at times, and she’s 20 years younger. So maybe our poor frenzied brains have just had it with all the intrusion/suppression stuff, and they spazz out.

While my son and I were in Barcelona, we were talking about languages and he pointed out that (most) American English speakers pronounce “atoms” and “Adams” as if both were spelled with a d, whereas British English speakers are more accurate; they make the distinction between the consonants t and d. And that’s indicative of another problem. Italian is precise, and American English isn’t. Americans muddy their vowels, so making those pure, clear Italian vowel sounds can be hard, as can sounding the essential double consonants. Failing to bounce those double consonants can lead to some spectacularly embarrassing errors, like when tourists or newbies pronounce penne and anno as if they had one n.

So, how to deal with all of these challenges? Here are some of my favorite learning tools. Cities are given because regional accents vary.

• Learn Italian with Lucrezia (YouTube, podcast, Instagram): I’ve watched Lucrezia’s videos for years. Her grammar lessons are super clear and useful, and she’s great at giving you good conversational tools. For listening comprehension she does vlogs that also give you glimpses into Italian daily life, travel, or food. She’s in Roma.

• Learn Italian with Vaporetto Italiano (website, YouTube, Instagram): I discovered Francesco’s videos fairly recently, and I think they’re terrific. Like Lucrezia, he offers a mix of types of content; for whatever reason, his grammar lessons really stick with me. He also talks about literature and reads portions of books aloud, a boon for me. And he’s quite the actor. He’s in Ferrara.

• Podcast Italiano (website, YouTube, podcast, Instagram): Davide is a young polyglot whose fascination with languages runs deep. His podcasts and videos include conversational stuff, theory and techniques of language learning, cultural and language differences within Italy, and lots more. He’s in Torino.

My other methods: iTalki for conversation, reading books in Italian, and occasional workbook use (can’t help it; I love those things). Oh, and dumping endless amounts of content into a file labeled “Italian language” that I never open.

Of course, the best method is speaking Italian on a daily basis, which I do with my friends and neighbors. It really helps to live in a place where most people don’t speak English, or, if they do, they almost never use it. Most of them won’t correct me, but that’s where iTalki comes in—a weekly hour of conversation with the chance to ask questions and make corrections is very useful.

There’s a well-known benefit to language learning—it helps to keep your mind sharp (supposedly). And I’ve discovered another one—as a fiction writer, I’m finally at the point where Italian is beginning to influence my writing, by loosening my approach to English syntax and punctuation. I’m very curious to see how this influence develops.

If you’re learning Italian, I have one hard-and-fast piece of advice for you: set your (perfectly normal, very common) fear of speaking aside. Italian is such a beautiful language that it’s hard to ruin it completely, and the Italian people are extremely tolerant of tongue-tied learners. Swallow your pride, silence your inner critic, and mutilate the language with confidence. Divertitevi! Have fun!

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Books of the week:

• La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language by Dianne Hales

• Coraggio, Charlie Brown! by Charles M. Schulz (If you know the Peanuts comics well, you’ll be able to figure out a lot of the Italian.)

Poems of the week:

• “Goody for Our Side and Your Side Too” by Ogden Nash

• “Learning a Language” by Olivia McMahon (I couldn’t find a good link for this poem, so I stole this image from someone’s Facebook page. Thanks, stranger!)