Inglese in Bologna

The following blog contains real or imagined collections of thoughts structured into sentences (hopefully) describing events that may or may not have happened to individuals that may or may not resemble The Warnocks. If any part of the blog resembles someone or some place you know, this happened completely by accident and is not meant to offend any party. This blog does not reflect the opinions of management i.e. Leslie.

Me Tarzan, she Jane. No, Tarzan and Jane, no Africa. We Canadese. No, Tarzan and Jane have no little Tarzans e Janes. Tarzan e Jane fly to aeroporto from Canadese. I gesture with my hand a perfect arc meant to clarify our flight from Victoria to Europe. This seems to confuse them even more.

Tarzan is who I feel like when I try to speak in Italian. A sentence containing all the correct elements is impossible. I feel like I have been raised by apes and suddenly plucked from the jungle and dropped into Bologna as some sort of experiment. Unfortunately, I don’t have Tarzan's confidence, only his lack of command of sentence structure. The thought is there, it just cannot be transferred to my tongue, which should waggle automatically as it does in Victoria and convey the appropriate words to the recipient. Is this what a stroke patient with aphasia feels like?

Leslie and I wander around Bologna, occasionally meeting someone with as little English as we have Italian. The result cannot be called a conversation...more like a phone company trying to explain the hieroglyphics of their unintelligible bill to a frustrated customer. We usually say “goodbye, ciao” to each other, neither party knowing who said what to whom.

Unlike Florence or Rome, you rarely hear English being spoken on the streets of Bologna. This is what we wanted and now we have it. We had hoped the lack of English would push us into the challenge of starting to learn some Italian. We thought this might be fun.

We enquired at several different language companies and settled on a small family run firm called Madrelingua. It is owned by a couple - Daniel is English and Stefania is an Italian from Rimini on the Adriatic coast. Leslie told me I had to take a skill test assessing my level of Italian before we began lessons. I try to tell her this is absurd as other than mamma mia, alora, grazie, prego and scuzi the vessel is empty, bone dry, finito, no Italiano. Fortunately, Stefania agreed and spared me the embarrassment of handing in a blank sheet of paper, something I hadn’t done since an exam in grade 12 quadratic equations that I had not studied for.

One of the rules of the school is to speak as much Italian as possible and preferably no English. This basically means I cannot talk at school. I just stand there in my loin cloth, embarrassed, sounding like Tarzan. Now, I have never been a man of many words but with no outlet other than Leslie, the English is starting to build up. The pressure must be relieved before spontaneous conversation occurs due to excessive verbiage containment ( E.V.C.). Talking to yourself in Canada is considered to be pathological and I am afraid as it is impossible to tell what will come out should my EVC reach a critical level in Bologna.

The Italian language can be beautiful although not as smooth and as sexy as French. It has an expressive rhythm and melody. I want to soar and sing much like Pavarotti as I express myself. I am disappointed to find out in class that instead of soaring, I squeak. Pavarotti never squeaked.

It didn’t take me long to figure out that somebody who tries to teach me Italian must know English. Therefore, the teachers have some English conversations stored up somewhere inside of them. The only problem is that I am paying them a lot of money not to speak English to me.
I start to plot ways to get at the English in them. The teachers are smarter then I think they are. I try to nudge a conversation slowly but surely toward English. I try telling them an “amusing anecdote that I have to explain in English”. Lucia, our teacher, doesn’t laugh. She just says “No! Back to Italia!” This isn’t as fun as I thought it would be.

For people who have studied languages, it may not be a surprise that whoever made the rules decided there should be masculine and feminine nouns. Not only that, but their sexuality affects what precedes and follows in sentence. This was a shock to me and school was getting really confusing. I had no idea that words would eye each other longingly and then want to be rearranged in a sexually appropriate manner. I just wish they would do it themselves without needing my help.

I asked Lucia if there are any homosexual or bisexual words. Again, Lucia didn’t laugh. When I took my first language lessons as a two year old, my mother didn’t tell me about the birds and bees of language. Puberty was difficult the first time through, now it seems like here we go again, alora! I thought I had learned my lessons well. I am maschile and Leslie is femminile, end of discussion.

During class, I find myself staring out the window, dreaming of quadratic equations and the fast approaching happy hour, not a dangling participle in sight. I refocus on Jane (Leslie) to see her sitting bolt upright and focused with her usual enthusiastic expression. I try refocusing again and concentrate on finding my inner Italiano. I know he’s in there somewhere. We are having so much fun.

Yours truly,
Pier Francisco Warnocko