Visiting the doctor’s office in Italy left a permanent
change in me. The doctor was a kind man, and we were treated well, but my
inability to convey to him the cause of my pain and how it had happened left me
frustrated. But I was relatively lucky in that I had an adult fluent in Italian
to translate for me.
When we returned to the U.S., I developed a new
respect for immigrants who were disadvantaged in not speaking English. Not only
did they have to adjust to different customs and expectations, but they had the
huge handicap of not being able to listen to the local populace and learn from
what they heard. Just like me in Italy, they had to struggle to understand what
was being said and then grope for the correct words to communicate with the natives.
If they were parents they faced, as I had, the
prospect of losing verbal contact with their children as those children soaked
up the language and merged into the new environment. Some of these parents were
told by teachers to forbid their native language being spoken at home so that
the children could learn English more quickly. In Italy no one told me to stop
speaking English around our home, and if they had, I would have objected
loudly. Even so, my boys were so young that they absorbed Italian, and as I have mentioned, they began to forget English.
After that visit to the doctor, I appreciated even
more Cousin Luigi’s patience with me, his willingness to wait for me to find the
right words, and his ability to fill in what I might have misspoken. When
visiting Gabi later in life, I found this same kindness in another of George’s
cousins, Rosemma. She too speaks no English but is always patient with me. Between
hand signals and my recall of words I thought I had forgotten, we have always
been able to communicate somehow. (Although I am not certain how much of what
we say gets lost in the gaps between us!)
 |
| Cousin Rosemma on the right. |
My encounters with Luigi, and later with Rosemma, were
to shape my responses to others. When the company I worked for in California
hired three Hungarian engineers for six months, they spoke English with heavy
accents, and remembering my struggles in Italy, I went out of my way to
communicate with them. But I watched what happened when the Hungarians tried to
start a conversation with others in the company. Our employees would be polite
enough, smile, and answer questions, but at the first opportunity they slipped
away. Perhaps it was shyness, perhaps it was a fear of not understanding the
foreign accent, but when my co-workers hurried off, I recognized the Hungarian’s
look of bewilderment. I had felt that same way in Italy.
I understood then, twenty years later, what had
happened when we interacted with Italians in social gatherings. I had tried to
join the conversation, but when they didn’t understand me, or I didn’t
understand them, the back and forth flow of words was blocked, and it was
difficult to continue. At an early age we learn social language skills: I say
something, you reply, then I reply to your comment, and so on. If your reply doesn’t fit with what has gone before, I have to try to
understand where you have taken the conversational thread. For instance, if I ask what you had for lunch
and you reply, “Mel’s Diner,” I might stop, interpret, then say, “No, not where did you go for lunch, what did you eat for lunch?” Usually we
can restart the rhythm without too much effort. Not so when one of us is
struggling with the language. When misunderstanding constantly interrupts
communication, the rhythm never gets established, and it becomes frustrating
for everyone. Most people don’t have the time or patience to keep trying. In
social situations in Italy, it was far easier for the Italian to turn to George
and let him translate, or easier for me to simply listen and not try to enter
the dialogue. Learning a new language as an adult is hard, much harder than it
would appear if you’ve never tried it!
I encountered a similar dynamic when teaching university
writing to a diverse population of students. Often they were the children of
immigrants, the first ones to attend college, and they wrote of being the
family translator from a young age. With a limited child’s vocabulary, they
were forced to translate to bureaucrats, while their parents silently listened
not understanding the words that flew past them. I would feel for those
students and the responsibility they bore for translating correctly. And I felt
an affinity with their helpless parents, as I remembered the same sensation with
the doctor in Italy.
The story of our
move to Italy starts with "Arrival"
on the June 26, 2017 blog post.
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