An Open Letter to my Italians...
On the things I haven't said
I'm Trula, and I'm seventeen years old. But you've probably never heard a seventeen year old Trula speak. If you've known me from the beginning, then you probably first heard the voice of a two year old Trula....but not a two year old who babbles endlessly about the newness of the world...more like a seventeen year old's mind...knowledge and awareness, fears and anxieties, somehow trying to express itself through the vocabulary of a two year old. I hope that today my speech could maybe pass as that of a five or six year old, but I know that I still by no means speak my age.
Is it funny to watch the voice of a toddler come out of a teenager? Is it difficult not to snicker as I use the wrong verb tense, flail in a sea of prepositions, and use ten hastily gathered words in a last-chance attempt to express one word that I don't know? I know that it must be tiring, wading through my swamp of ill pronounced, or even nonexistent words and terribly constructed phrases, and I wonder how many times I have spoken, believing that I am communicating one thing when in reality, I have said something completely different. I wonder how many absolutely bizarre things you think about me as a result of these misunderstandings.
To those of you who still try, for some reason, to talk to and treat me like the seventeen year old that I am, I wish you could know just how much it means to me. I wish you could know how important your willingness to grab lunch, coffee, or gelato, or even just converse with me, is.....it's not effort free by any stretch of the imagination for me, and I know that it's not effort free for you either, but your decision to try anyway has truly changed this year, and my life. I wish you could know how much you are appreciated, and I wish that I could tell you all of the things that I want to be able to say to you...
I wish I could better show you my sense of humor, my sarcasm, my snide remarks, my witty responses. I wish I could talk to you using the perfect words, implying subtle meanings, twisting grammar and structure, metaphor and meaning, playing with delicately placed words until they work together to say exactly what I mean......It's an art form that I never realized the existence of, let alone the importance of.....until I was suddenly left with that crappy dollar store kiddie art kit, instead of the beautiful colors and brushes and techniques that I have curated over the span of seventeen years.
There are days when I'm ready to give up....when I simply cannot bring myself to try to sharpen that stupid colored pencil that is so cheap that it breaks every time it's almost sharp, and then to try to use it to color on paper so thin that it tears if I mess up and try to erase my mistakes. There are days when it seems impossible to express how I feel in a language that I cannot yet call my own, when I am ashamed of every sound that comes off of my tongue, when my embarrassment at the inadequacy of my own words brings me to tears, and I turn away from my feeble attempts at communication, giving into the humiliation stinging my eyes. Enough. Basta.
Many adults that I’ve talked to, especially in the world of exchange, have a tendency to sing the praises of intercultural relationships.....they smother our fears about language-related difficulties with some sort of "small world" rhetoric. "Despite the different cultures and languages of the world, we're all fundamentally the same....we're all humans", they say. "The relationships that you can form with people despite a language barrier can be absolutely incredible", they like to tell us. I'm not saying that there isn't some truth to this, as I am unbelievably impressed and grateful for some of my strictly Italian-speaking relationships. However, the truth is, it is no coincidence that the two Italians that I am by far the closest with, are two girls that I have the ability to speak fluent English with. It's not that I don't ever speak Italian with them, but the unfortunate reality is that it is very, very difficult to get past a certain point in a friendship without certain language constructions. I'm sure that this sounds cold, but the next time you get together with a friend and have a multiple hour conversation, try having that conversation with words that are always used 100% literally.....a conversation without sarcasm, a conversation in which at least a third of your responses, topics, or remarks(anything that goes beyond the everyday scope of casual conversation) are cancelled in your head before they ever come off of your tongue, and you have to scramble to find suitable replacements before their absence becomes evident. A conversation in this fashion not only is exhausting, but also gets very boring very quickly.
It's the difference between a good teacher and a bad teacher.....the subject matter is fundamentally the same, but one makes you like the material, the other makes you hate it. One you request for the next year of study, the other you pray that you will never have again. The native language conversation is at-ease, fun, enjoyable.....and makes you want to see that person again, to get to know them better. The conversation with the language barrier can become, all too quickly, a discourse riddled with awkward pauses and mishaps, a tiring affair which, if stretched any longer than the normal time limits of casual conversation, makes you suddenly remember that "really important appointment" that you suddenly need to get to, and you put that person on a mental list of "casually be busy next time in order to avoid her" people.
But that's where you come in.....because despite all of this, you're still there. You are there to remind me that, after several weeks of not seeing each other, you think that my Italian has gotten a little bit better. You are there, backing me up when I slowly try a word that I'm not sure if I've heard somewhere or just made up, when I mistakenly use a verb that sounds very similar to my intended one, but has a very different meaning. Most importantly, you're simply there as a friend, and I'm truly sorry that in exchange for your extraordinary patience and kindness, you hear only a shadow of the things that I want to tell you. I don't know if the Trula that you've gotten to know is a compromised one, or just a different one altogether......and although my criticizing mind tells me that it's definitely the former, I have to hope that maybe it's a bit of both.
But I know that those of you who I truly want to tell this to won't read this. Or maybe you'll try, but you won't fully understand. Because the terrible irony is that the very people who this is written for likely cannot understand this level of English, and it is precisely this level of English that I simply cannot translate into Italian. So I'm sorry. I'm so sorry that I might not ever be able to tell you, and you might not ever know. But I hope someday, somehow, we'll talk without the barriers.
~Trula
Hi Trula,
ReplyDeleteVery well said and I totally understand where you are coming from. I just got back from 3 weeks of language school in Merida(have done it before). My Spanish is coming along fairly well but there are those times when I just want it to flow and it stops somewhere. You just have to keep staying connected to Italian when you return. So glad you've had such an extraordinary year...
Cathy
Another great read! I hope they can sense your wit because you ooze it in English. I've never been any good at a second language but when I try to have good conversation I often tell the other person what they like to do instead of what I like, so at least I know I still come across as bossy. ;). Good luck I'm sure you are doing great. Besos
ReplyDeleteOh, how I understand this from my year in a German university after five quarters of German at UCSC and an intensive upon arrival. The "miss" of not getting to share emotions and the intense attention needed to follow a conversation and respond. I knew enough German to know how what I was saying incorrectly and this feeling was a constant companion in the wonders of the new world I was in. I actually spoke more flowingly when I revisted 10 years later because I could no longer remember everything I was doing wrong...and it gave me a freedom to speak whatever came naturally. I took a journey with my mother into East Germany before the wall came down and look back at the utter bravery of that undertaking! You will be amazed how delightful it will be to be able to speak everywhere when you come home. I remember returning to college and how profound it was to understand absolutely everyone around me. But what you're doing is worth so, so much. May Italian continue to be a love and a skill you can hone to new degrees of freedom of expression. German has been that way for me and always feels familiarly dear. Many blessings and thank you for sharing the real struggle of this.
ReplyDeleteDear Trula--
ReplyDeleteYou a such a fine writer. And you have so beautifully captured the frustrations and limitations of being a language learner. I'm seeing the other side of that now, tutoring English as a second language. Sometimes my tutee and I toggle back and forth between our limited use of each others' language, struggling to find words that work. I draw on everything I learned on my high school exchange to Mexico. She laughs at my anachronisms! Forget any subtleties, but we have managed to talk about some emotional stuff.
You also brought to mind my lovely mother-in-law, who was a native Hungarian speaker, married into a German speaking family in the States, and then spoke mostly English for decades. When I saw her conversing with her one Hungarian friend I saw a whole different personality emerge in her face and body expression. She was always wonderful to me, but oh how I wanted to know that other Giska, the one who spoke her native language with such animation and humor.
You may not be able to reach your purported audience, but you certainly moved and sparked thought in this reader.
It's always a pleasure to read your words, both for what you have to say and the ways you say it!
--Carolyn