Val d’Orcia in Tuscany, where the homecoming scene in “Gladiator” was filmed
By PJ Parrish
Buongiorno, cani del crimine!
Okay, fair warning. This post is going to be full of digressions. Because I am of a wandering mood today.
As you read this, I am probably having dinner somewhere in Tuscany. Am writing this ahead of departure, however, so I don’t have a clue where I will actually be. I travel with my husband Daniel, my best friend Linda and another old-friend-couple Roon and Athena. We’ve had great luck traveling together so we’re off again – The Traveling Wilburys.
First digression: Most of you have probably heard of the real Traveling Wilburys. They were a super-group composed of George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne and Roy Orbison. You had to be special to be a Wilbury. Not everyone had the creds and soul to be a Wilbury.
On a Sirius XM Tom Petty channel, Petty talked about how they used to sit around and muse about who could be a Wilbury and who could not. Jack Nicholson = Wilbury. Richard Dreyfuss = great actor but never a Wilbury.
This is how we feel about our little travel group. You have to have the right stuff. Our Wilburys like the countryside, not big cities. We seek out eateries discovered on the wing, not Michelin-mandated must-tries. We love to sit in cafes and watch the world go by, not face the selfie-hoards around the Mona Lisa. I am convinced conflicting travel vibes is behind the failure of many marriages.
But I digress.
I have been trying to learn some Italian before this trip. I do it because I think it’s necessary to have good manners as a visitor and because I found it so darn frustrating on my first trip to France in 1985 that I couldn’t talk to folks.
After much agony and decades, I can speak enough French to get by. As David Sedaris wrote of his own sad attempts to learn French: Me talk pretty one day. From his essay of the same name:
Learning French is a lot like joining a gang in that it involves a long and intensive period of hazing. And it wasn’t just my teacher; the entire population seemed to be in on it. Following brutal encounters with my local butcher and the concierge of my building, I’d head off to class, where the teacher would hold my corrected paperwork high above her head, shouting, “Here’s proof that David is an ignorant and uninspired ensigiejsokhjx.”
My only comfort was the knowledge that I was not alone. Huddled in the smoky hallways and making the most of our pathetic French, my fellow students and I engaged in the sort of conversation commonly overheard in refugee camps.
“Sometimes me cry alone at night.” “That is common for me also, but be more strong, you. Much work, and someday you talk pretty. People stop hate you soon. Maybe tomorrow, okay?”
But I digress.
Learning a new language isn’t just for the benefit of the foreigners you might meet. It’s good for you. Like at a cellular level.
Everyone’s brain is made up of neurons, and things called dendrites, which are the connections between neurons. This is what we call “grey matter.” Bilingual folks have more of these neurons and dendrites compared to the rest of us. This means that their grey matter is even greyer.
Bilingualism also has an impact your brain’s white matter. This is the system of nerve fibres which connect all four lobes of the brain. This system coordinates communication between the different brain regions. This helps you learn new stuff. Bilinguals have a lot of white stuff.
Yeah, but it’s hard, darn it. Kids, well, they tend to pick up languages pretty easily. We old farts really struggle. But it’s worth it. Just the process of trying to learn Italian gives my brain a workout and protects me from dementia. So I can say with great confidence that after six months suffering through Babbel Italian, I can now say “Where are the car keys?” (Dove sono le chiavi della macchina?). But I still have trouble finding my car in the lot at Home Depot.
Scientific studies have shown that learning a language also helps you stay awake. Just one week studying a new language helps students’ levels of alertness and focus. This improvement was maintained with continuous language study of at least five hours a week. And get this: Improvement in attention span was noted across all age groups up to 80. This gives me great hope because napping is my new hobby.
But I digress.
Okay, so learning Italian is good for:
- Polite manners
- Finding a bathroom in Cortona
- Helping your memory
- Keeping you awake
But what does all this have to do with writing novels? (And you thought I didn’t have a point today). Well, turns out that according to studies, learning a foreign language helps you communicate better in your native language. It also boosts your powers of empathy. And maybe the best benefit: It increases your ability to see things from a different perspective. To put it another way, foreign language study:
- Enhances your command of English
- Makes you understand human nature
- Allows you to walk in another person’s shoes. Madame Bovary, c’est moi.
Don’t we novelists need all three of those in spades?
In trying to learn French, I had to respect the structure of the language (if you put an adjective in the wrong place, it can change its meaning completely). I had to learn the nuances of the accent and subjunctive tense (One neglected subjunctive and a kiss is not a kiss, it’s a shag). In trying to learn Italian, the biggest lesson I learned was that sometimes you just have to go with the flow.
Italian is a very quirky language. I’m a tad anal and I drove myself crazy trying to analyze the whys behind it. I was always looking for the theory and sense behind its structure. I finally gave up and just tried to speak. I hear that the Italians are a very forgiving people.
I love idioms and my favorite in Italian so far is this one:
Non tutte le ciambelle riescono col buco.
This translates literally as “not all donuts come out with holes.” It means, roughly, that things aren’t going according to plan but, hey, don’t sweat it. Que sera. It’s a verbal shrug. Which is pretty good advice in any language for any situation, right?
But I digress.
A presto, amici!
Very entertaining, this! Happy Wilburying…
I took 8 (eight, ocho, 7+1) years of Spanish in school, starting in 7th grade. Can I speak it fluently? Not hardly, at least not anymore. But back in the day, I was pretty good with it. Took a trip to Mexico when I was in college, and was able to get along fairly well. Got a few smirks with my weird accent, though, but mostly people were *sort of* impressed with my effort.
Sometimes I think about going back to learning Spanish again. Maybe. As you say, it might stave off the mind games we seniors have to play sometimes.
Which reminds me. We re-watched “The Green Mile” last night, and I heard the funniest phrase I’ve heard in a long time. Guess I missed it the other times we watched.
His cheese has slid off his cracker a bit.
I can think of a few folks this describes. But I digress . . . 🙂
Have a great day, wherever you are!
Entertaining and enlightening, Kris. It’s inspiring, too, to hear how learning another language helps against dementia. It certainly helps writers. I had four years of French in high school. I choose French in 9th grade because one of my great-grandmothers was French-Canadian and she had passed away the previous spring. It certainly broadened my mind even as I struggled. It was taught by the traditional method of translation which I struggled with.
In college, I took German by the immersion method, taught by a polymath of languages, Robert Wimmer, and it stuck with me for years. Twenty years ago my wife and I took a single term of Spanish, alas, again via translation, and I used this at the library in a limited but useful fashion.
I’ve wanted to learn Latin for a long time, even have a Great Courses DVD set. Perhaps now is the time.
Love that Italian idiom you shared! May you and your own Traveling Wilburys have a fantastic time in Tuscany!
Sounds like you prefer the same things I do when traveling. Crowds make me cringe at home, so why would other places be different?
I tried learning German before my Danube trip, but then everyone on the ship came from Eastern Europe and I never needed it. As for the markets, if I could say “How much does this cost?” that was enough
Enjoy your trip and your companions.
Fascinating research regarding the brain matter, Kris. Sadly, I only speak English. 😉
Safe travels. Hope you have a blast! I’ve always wanted to visit Italy.
Beautiful photo and delightful post, Kris. My language background is a couple of years of Latin ( which I loved) and a couple of semesters of French. We (my husband and I) have also picked up smatterings of languages from years of having friends and colleagues from different countries. I think saying even a few words in the native language of a country you visit shows respect to the people of that land.
We were at FermiLab during the period of detente when there were several Russian physicists and their wives there. As a way to build relationships, we took Russian lessons from one of the wives, and I learned to read the Cyrillic alphabet fairly well. Even had a small vocabulary. Here’s a riddle in Russian (transliterated to our alphabet):
Bratya ee sestree u manya nyet
No otets etova cheloveka – seen myova otsa
Kto eta chelovek?
Brothers and sisters I have none
But that man’s father is my father’s son
Who is that man?
Have a wonderful trip and safe travels home.
Who is that man?
The speaker’s son! But of course . . .
Well done!
Totally agree with your main point, Kris (you had a main point, right? ;-). Learning other languages opens your mind and increases empathy, all of which can be put down on the page.
I’m multilingual and enjoy interacting with folks in their native language. My favorite trick is to throw a well-known tongue twister into a conversation. If I’m talking about food with a French person, I’ll pop in a quick: Didon dina, dit-on, du dos d’un dodu dindon. Their eyebrows quickly rise and a smile soon follows. A friend is made.
If that French phrase is too ambitious, you can always throw out a quick L’état, c’est moi at the right moment and see what happens.
Carry on, mes amis.
My brother-in-law lived in Gabon, Africa for seven years, speaking only French he learned in Zaire. My husband studied German in college, our daughter had four years of Spanish classes, and I speak some French, a little Spanish, and a smattering of German. The four of us rode the trains and backpacked through Europe for several weeks, sure that we’d be able to communicate everywhere we went. Um, nope. I think it would have been better if we’d known nothing. Hand signs worked better than anything else.
I read that the creators of Babbel spent a year with three months of total immersion in each of four countries. They found that was enough time to become fluent in each language. I had a French-Canadian friend who married a man from Mexico and when they moved there, she was scared, but decided to force herself to leave the house each day and go out among the natives and learn. Within two months, she was confident enough to go anywhere and know she could understand and be understood. I find language learning is much easier if one can speak and listen to native speakers a lot, rather than just thirty minutes a day on the computer. Unfortunately for most of us, this is impossible because we can’t go spend three months in another country. My French did get us through Quebec. 😊
Hi guys. Don’t know if this will get thru. We are high up on a beautiful hill overlooking a valley where Montepulciano appears from the mist every morning like Brigadoon then fades away. My sad Italian is serving me well except when I asked where the mustard is in the supermarket and he sent me to the jams.