About 10 years ago, my Italian reached caveman level and stopped. For some reason, no matter how hard I try I can’t seem to get any better. OK, I occasionally pick up an interesting word or two (did you know that finocchio, which is Italian for fennel, is also slang for gay? I haven’t worked out yet whether it’s a homophobic insult or an affectionate nickname.) I understand most of what goes on around me and sometimes I can communicate some quite complicated ideas. But I’m still limited to the sort of sentences Tarzan would use: “Me Like Italy. Me Go In Milan. Me Make Fire, Fire Pretty.”
For a long time I found this really frustrating, but I recently realised there are advantages to the fact that everyone assumes you’re a moron. In other words, when you do something wrong, nobody’s very surprised or disappointed, and when you do something right – something really intelligent like remembering your door key or getting on the right train – everyone is overwhelmingly proud of you. Low expectations can be quite liberating.
For example this morning I dropped a parcel and a couple of letters off at the post office. I then mooched across the road to the tabaccheria where I was queuing for bus tickets when suddenly there was a tap on my shoulder – it was the bloke from the post office, holding out one of the cards I’d given him. I realised that in a stroke of genius I had forgotten to put the address on. In England this would have been the cue for much apologising and explanation but there was no way my language skills could stretch to it. I settled for “I regret. I forgot the address.”
I then had to grit my teeth through a friendly lecture, in which he patiently revealed that “if you don’t put an address on the envelope, it won’t get there.” But I could see he didn’t think I was a moron, just an innocent foreign babe in the dark scary woods of the international postal service. I flashed him a grateful smile, and with a friendly wave he headed back to the post office. He had the warm glowing feeling of having done a good deed – I got two seconds of humiliation in exchange for not having sent a birthday card to nowhere – everyone was a winner.
Of course I have to add a special PS – when would a London post office worker ever even cross a room to help you, let alone a whole street…
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