My
old friend from Rome, Gaetano Trusso, architect-poet-translator of
Persian poetry but not fitting any pigeonholes, as is the case with all
my close friends and family, was here last week and of course we spoke
Italian, with the odd French or English phrase inserted now and then.
I noticed that my ongoing inner monologue changes languages whenever I spend time with someone whose native tongue is different from mine, if I happen to know that tongue. I start to think in Italian, for instance, and my thinking takes on an Italianate character. I don't mean pasta adverts and lots of hand gestures but another range of thoughts, other vibrations, other colours. Finding links between apparently disparate things, a collage kind of thinking, more like flying than driving.
I noticed that my ongoing inner monologue changes languages whenever I spend time with someone whose native tongue is different from mine, if I happen to know that tongue. I start to think in Italian, for instance, and my thinking takes on an Italianate character. I don't mean pasta adverts and lots of hand gestures but another range of thoughts, other vibrations, other colours. Finding links between apparently disparate things, a collage kind of thinking, more like flying than driving.
2 comments:
I so agree Natalie. When I was young at home my Greek mother and I would speak Greek and my brother and father spoke English, but each understanding and answering each other. I too found that thinking, imagining, breathing in another language was such a rich addition to life. I became fluent enough in French and German too - with a smattering of what I call Restaurant Italian, and all that absorption of different aspects of being allowed me to work well even in parts of the world where I had no inkling of the language. I think it made me porous - if you know what I mean.
On my list of books which I must read this year is Four Words for Friend: Why Using More Than One Language Matters Now More Than Ever by Marek Kohn.
Olga, yes yes yes to all of that! If I ruled the world, or the educational part of it, I would make it law (but softly, gently) that all children from birth onwards are spoken to and with in at least three languages. Surely it would improve human relations worldwide. Wouldn't it?
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