Monday, May 3, 2010

"molto bello addormentarsi con sorriso."

why i love italy: it could simply come down to the fact that they call family guy "i griffin." i couldn't help but laugh out loud when davide told me that. but then again, maybe it was more of the amusement that we were actually able to understand each other. he asked me if i liked the simpsons, i said i preferred family guy. he didn't understand at first and then he realized what i meant when he understood the italian title and laughed at the miscommunication - we're speaking different languages but saying the same thing. i communicate with him and his friends (with the help of the usually-wise-wordreference.com and the awful-but-sometimes-correct-google translator) in broken english and italian and occasionally - i can't help it - in spanish as if they might possibly understand me better in a third language. sometimes it is just single words, sometimes single words in random order, sometimes with ?'s to show i don't know how to conjugate the word correctly or .... to show i am hesitating and unsure how to say it correctly, sometimes it is my version of italian then immediately corrected with the aid of a website's translation, sometimes it's perfect italian. i'm desperately trying. they get the gist of it. they are relentlessly patient and i am forever grateful. it hasn't been that long, but i love trying to speak italian, deciphering and applying newly learned words, having some form of a two-way-conversing-intercambio-exchange and in the end...hopefully...some sort of comprehension. it's rewarding.

google translator: giorno ho uno parlerĂ  fluentemente italiano
me: un giorno parlerĂ² correntamente l'italiano
i am right. i think. 

have you heard? b-b-b-bird bird bird is the word. 
again! again! i love repetition

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