Help! My Cat Needs a Hill and My Dog’s Chasing a Hormone
By: Fiona Cameron Lister
Tags: Pets, Life, Culture, Humor, Language Learning

What happens when you’re not gifted at languages but have to speak Italian…

“You’ll never guess what she’s said now! By the way, nice guinzaglio!” Photo: Fiona Cameron Lister

After almost 25 years living in Italy, I now speak good Italian. For someone not naturally gifted at foreign languages I think that’s quite an achievement. I’m proud to say that I am competent enough to have worked as a translator and even sold advertising in Italian on the phone. However, this does not mean I can’t screw up this lovely, lyrical language in a big way. Mistakes are part of learning and the better you get, the more over-confident you become. Trying to use a more complex expression can lead to huge misunderstandings. For instance, I was on the phone a few weeks ago and I needed to explain something technical but couldn’t remember the word. I ran outside to ask the Italian gardener. In my head I intended saying: “I need your language skills here,” what came out of my mouth was: “Quick, I need your tongue.” (I am going quite pink just remembering this. OMG!)

ANIMAL CRACKERS

Many of my mistakes have been animal-related. That’s because having pets forced me to speak, even when I lacked the vocabulary and ability, in order to perform simple tasks like buying food so they wouldn’t starve to death.

A typical incident happened in the local pet store. I noticed the friendly assistant’s face taking on an all-too-familiar expression: extreme politeness just failing to mask the urge to laugh.

“OK, what did I say?” I asked. I fess up instantly these days.

“No, no” she assured me, smirking. “Niente.”

I mentally ran back through my lengthy monologue on my beloved crow Merlina. And then the penny dropped. “Hooded crow” as you might imagine, was a relatively new word for me. It is, in case you ever need to know, “cornacchia” (kor-NACK-ee-ah). That is not what I said. I used the word “cantuccio”. A lot. And sadly, cantuccio has nothing to do with crows or even birds but is a hard dessert cookie you dip into Vin Santo (sweet Italian wine). I had explained how I rescued a cookie, how my cookie now lived in an aviary I had built myself in the garden and how I was here looking for a toy for my cookie as I was worried it was bored.

Quite.

Note to self: This is a picture of a house with a hill in the background. There are no collars in this picture.

When we first moved to Umbria, Tuscany’s neighboring region, my mistakes were frequent. I asked the assistant in the local hardware store for a packet of lambs (“agnelli”) instead of curtain rings (“anelli”). I think that was where I first experienced the baffled stare that was to become so familiar over the years.

Another time, I told the man in the farm accessories shop that I needed a “collina” for my cat. He seemed quite shocked by this simple request and told me they didn’t have any. Why on earth I thought that “collina” (hill) was the word for collar (the shockingly obvious “collare”) I have absolutely no idea, but to his credit he did his laughing in the stockroom when he thought I had gone.

TRICKS OF THE MEMORY

I like using mnemonics to remember words. I am very proud of knowing the Italian word for dog leash — “guinzaglio” which I remember by breaking it up into syllables guin — za- lio, and then creating a mental picture of Queen Guinevere and ZsaZsa Gabor walking Leo the lion on a dog leash. (Brilliant, isn’t it?) I also use word association, so when I learned that an alternative word for porcupines (“porcospini”) was “istrici” I thought I could remember it because it sounded very similar to the hormone “estrogen”. This was fine until I needed to retrieve the word from my amazing memory when telling an Italian friend an animal anecdote.

I began the sentence well (you will find this happens a lot — start something and then not know how to finish) but then needed the magic word. Just in time I remembered it. Phew! “My dog,” I said dramatically in Italian, “chased a hormone this morning!”

Guess What I’ve Just Seen!

My farming neighbour Bruna had already experienced communication problems with me. She came across the road one day and asked me to rescue her coniglio which had escaped. I had no clue what she was on about, so she was forced to waggle her arms on top of her head and say “Bugs Bunny” to explain. Mind you, I wish she hadn’t, because the rabbit was lodged under a rusty bedstead and when I got hold of it, it bit me!

Bruna was therefore a little wary as she approached me curiously one morning. I was armed with binoculars and scanning the sky. What was I looking at?

I was fairly sure I knew the word for “falcon” and so I told her I had been watching one and would she like to see it through my binoculars. “Are you sure?” she said looking at me incredulously. “Oh yes,” I replied. “I’ve seen quite a few.” She declined and made a quick exit. I knew the signs and raced inside for the dictionary. Ah. Falcon was “falco”. That’s not what I had said. I told her I’d seen a fairy.