The Italian lesson

Cornuto. It's not the first word Leo has learned in Italian, but it may be the one he remembers the longest -- scrawled on my journal and explained in minute detail by one of the many Italian characters I've come to know.

(Italian-Americans will recognize the word or the accompanying hand gesture, at left, both of which convey that someone is a cuckold. Perhaps the worst insult you could level at a man in Italy -- and hence the first word in the lesson).

His teacher? Cristiano -- my old student, who once told me I shouldn't worry that I was losing my Italian by returning to live in America since the errors I was making were the very same I had made when I was still living in Italy. Ba-dum-bum!

Or when I said I was having trouble finding work and he suggested that I try finding a job at Hooters (in an email to my boyfriend, AKA Mike; the exact phrase was something like 'one of those restaurants where the waitresses have their tits out'). When we've reunited in Italy during my trips back, he often explains away his bad English by saying he had a bad teacher (me). Tuscan humor at its finest. He's from a suburb of Florence, and despite the gruff, semi-macho demeanor, is a devoted husband (to his middle school sweetheart) and father.

Some very astute, very organized parents are raising their children bilingual but I am not. I found myself busy enough when Leo was born bathing, changing and feeding him that the idea of adding another task (or doing all of that in my second language) seemed absurd, especially since we were no longer in Italy (plus, I wanted to form a bond in my main language, the language I write in, primarily). 

But I do want Leo to learn some Italian, particularly since Mike is what one might call a "heritage speaker" -- he learned Italian because he is of Italian origin. His grandfather was born in a small town near Benevento in Southern Italy (which we visited during our last trip). So Leonardo is also Italian!

Now there's studying Italian in your own country and there's learning Italian on the ground in Italy. I always make a distinction because when I went abroad for a semester in Siena during college, the first two words I learned were as follows:

Scherzare (verb): to joke, to kid.

Sciopero (noun): labor strike

I had never encountered those words in the 18 months I had been studying Italian at college in America but they were essential to navigating Italian life once I arrived -- especially scherzare. The Italian university students I met in Siena punctuated practically every sentence with the phrase, "Sto scherzando." ("I am joking"). And once I went to live in Florence, there were quite a few times that a sciopero of the bus drivers left me high and dry.

What does that say about Italy? I like to think it says something -- especially, again, the verb scherzare (pronounced sort of like ~ skare-czar-ay). Italians cannot live without joking and hence any American visitor who wants to understand Italians must learn the verb for joking or kidding.

Now back to cornuto -- whose introduction also probably says something about Italians, or this particular Italian conducting the "lesson."

When I called Cristiano to fix a time to meet, he asked if Leo spoke Italian and I thought it best to be honest. No, he does not, I said.

"No problem," Cristiano replied. "Glielo insegno io!" I'll teach him.

Right then and there I knew we were talking about lessons that would be remarkably different from how I teach.

When we sat down for lunch, Cristiano asked for a piece of paper so he could begin instruction. I whipped out my journal and had the presence of mind not to tear out a page but rather let him write directly in the book so we'd have a "souvenir" of our time together.

And the very first word he tackled was cornuto, followed by "vaffunculo" (see definition here if this is the one word of Italian you've managed to miss), and various uses of the word for shit ("merda").

Leo was delighted! And when we returned to Connecticut, I heard him bragging in the pool to his buddies that he can now curse in Italian.

But more importantly, he asked a lot of questions about Italian this trip -- about words and expressions and meanings, even whether a word was "gendered." I guess he learned that in Spanish class. Not what I learned in Spanish class at Burns Avenue Elementary! (We learned, I kid you not, the American Pledge of Allegiance, which I can still recite in Spanish).

PUBLIC SERVICE MESSAGE for WRITING IN A JOURNAL: Do you see how amazing it is to keep a journal? You hand it over to your hooligan of a friend and he writes an entry for the ages. His impromptu Italian lesson becomes part of the journal that I took everywhere I went, jotting down the addresses of coffee bars, grocery store lists, comments of people passing me on the street, complaints of fellow shoppers ('Troppo scolata, signorina' -- too revealing, miss -- said of a shirt) and of course as my time in Italy came to close, evidence of sadness that I had to leave this marvelous world behind. My other world, my other identity, fed by my knowledge of Italian.

But wait! There's more: Leo knows how to lie in Italian!

After dropping what felt like millions of euros on Pokemon cards, museum admissions and gelati, we jumped at a chance to save a little money when we arrived at the courtyard of Santo Spirito in Florence where for a small entrance fee you could see a relatively hidden part of the famous Brunelleschi church  that includes a crucifix made by Michelangelo (I used to go to mass there and I am not sure I even know there was a side courtyard you could access).

If Leo were less than 10 years old -- say 9, for example, or nove in Italian -- he could enter for free. I guess Mike and I discussed it in front of Leo (who turned 10 in early July) but without giving any instructions to him. Then we turned to the attendant and said in Italian, "Two adult admissions and one free child admission."

She was rather stern, the attendant (one of those women who could be a nun but you're not sure) and turned to Leo immediately, saying, "Quanti anni hai?" How old are you? 

Without any coaching, he said, "Nove." Nine! And hence free.

Stunned, I turned to Mike. "The boy knows how to lie in Italian!" (mentire -- he'll probably learn that word soon, too.)

The courtyard is quite nice, by the way, full of tombs whose inscriptions I "enjoyed" reading (enjoyed linguistically because how a culture talks about death is somewhat unique). And that Michelangelo? Well, as Leo said of La Pietà at St. Peters, it was "good."

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