sergeant major is my name

I have met an Italian teacher who wants to swap conversation lessons with me, and she tells me that I’m at roughly intermediate level. I’m not convinced, but I’m deeply pleased with the idea of achieving an intermediate level of proficiency at absolutely anything, and it reassures me that my somewhat eccentric approach to language acquisition is paying off. Fluency in the face of gross inaccuracy is my motto. I mangle Italian grammar beyond all recognition, and I have a disturbing tendency to fill the gaps in my vocabulary by just making words up. On the other hand, sometimes the words I make up actually exist. And when I need to, I find that I can do things like report a stolen bicycle (the policeman, with his silly moustache and silly cape, takes down my details, asks, single or married? I say single. He says, ‘Single as in you don’t want a boyfriend, or single as in you can’t find one?’ I say, ‘Wow, there are separate boxes to tick for that?’); establish that the bike rental shop wants a hundred euros for the stolen bicycle; consult a lawyer about fines for stolen bicycles; and tell a bike rental guy that if he thinks I’m paying him a hundred euros, he can go and do unspeakable things to himself.

When you arrive in a country not knowing how to pronounce your own phone number and expect to get by, your language skills tend to develop haphazardly, but they do develop, lessons or no lessons. I’ve never had a ruler over the knuckles for misconjugating an irregular verb, but I have known the shame of being taken for a junkie because I spoke too slowly when asking for a light. So I tend to prioritise social functionality over footling details such as, you know, grammar and vocabulary.

In case you’re wondering, I don’t hit my students over the knuckles with rulers.

And when I say I have been taken for a junkie, I mean it happened yesterday.

The latest development is that my internal monologue has taken to haranguing me in Italian every waking hour. It’s not the first time my brain’s created nonsense sentences, but it’s never been so damn pushy about it before. I think it’s a strategy I’ve developed in order to train myself to think in Italian instead of translating everything as I go. It’s getting to be a pressing issue, because after a while your ineptitude stops being charming and starts being merely humiliating. So I’ve evidently got in touch with my inner despotic prig, who screams at me with the stubborn persistence of a bush doctor trying to prevent a tsetse fly victim from falling asleep. ‘A return to Valdarno!’ ‘I’ll have the tuna salad!’ ‘Thank you, I’m well, except for the jaundice!’ In conversation this is a quite useful, as it really does keep you on your toes. When, on the other hand, you’re just trying to pair your socks or scrub the bathtub in peace, and your brain’s still bellowing, ‘I’d love to go to the opera! I’ll get the tickets! We can bring our friend the robot! He paints mice! What’s that you say? The crack baby’s eaten all the candles? Come let us tickle him to death, that mouldy, abject little saucepan!’ it gets really wearing.