The summer of July 2019, I went to Venice with some friends.
Two of the islands of Venice worth visiting are called Murano and Burano. Of the two, I prefer Burano.
Burano is a beautiful island with vibrantly colored houses, bridges that you have to use to get to the other side of the road, and is known for lace-making. It was fun to walk through the town admiring the brightly painted houses and wandering into different lace shops. Most of them tended to be quite touristy or rather expensive, especially the ones close to the vaporetta(water metro) stops.
After going deeper and deeper into the island, I noticed this lace shop a little out of the way.
I walked in and after saying Ciao, began to look at all the lace inside. La donna (the lady) came up to me in the store and asked me in English if I had any questions. I responded with, Come si dice “lace”? (How do you say…?).
Immediately, her face lit up. Parli Italiano?! (“You speak Italian?!”) I was equally as surprised that I had understood her. I responded in English, “Well, not yet, but I am learning.” She responded slowly in Italian “I will speak slowly in Italian, and we’ll see if you can understand!”
We did exchange names (Come ti chiami? Mi chiama Anna.) but I have since forgotten her name. I wish I did remember it!
She then proceeded to take me around her lace store to all of the different lace and tell me about each one. She pointed out the ones that were machine-made and hand-made and even some that were made by her mother. Every now and then I would ask her the meaning of a word that I didn’t understand and she would say “Io non so; io no so (I don’t know). I only know enough English to sell my lace.”
After a while, I picked a piece of handmade lace and asked her Quanto costa? (How much?) and went to check out. She ended up giving me and my friends each a small piece of lace as well telling me how much she enjoyed telling a tourist about her lace in her own language.
To me, the coolest part of all of this–other than the fact that I got to meet an amazing woman– was that I understood her even though I don’t know Italian. I didn’t understand every word, but I understood the gist of what she was saying and ultimately connected with her, which is the point of language! The reason that I was able to do this, by my estimation, is because of my knowledge of Latin, and because I had been exposed to some Italian before.
Have you ever connected to someone unexpected in their native language?
