Italian? Sorry mate - it's all Greek to me

Jul 10 2008 By Chris Upton

We have always found it more difficult at Newman to persuade English students to spend a term abroad than to attract the Europeans (or the Japanese, for that matter) in the opposite direction. It’s the language thing, of course. Any German, Polish or Dutch student will be incomparably more confident in the English tongue, than an English student nervously stepping off at the deep end in Milan or Frankfurt.

I can hardly take the moral high ground on this, since my own halting efforts in any other language apart from Latin are hardly a thing to write home about.

I was 17 years old before I had the opportunity or the confidence to try speaking to a foreign person in their native language. And that first moment did psychological damage. I was in Athens with a school friend, our first trip overseas unless you count the Menai Straits. I had my phrasebook and he had run out of matches.

After heated negotiation, and considerable rehearsal, it was agreed that I would approach one of those street kiosks, which now seem to be limited to Eastern Europe. They sell all sorts of stuff there, but the window is always so small it’s impossible to get away with pointing at something. It’s a verbal exchange or nothing.

“Echete spirta?” I asked in faultless modern Greek. (Ancient Greek would have come more naturally, but they did not have matches in Classical Athens.)

“Ne” the man replied encouragingly, reached behind him and handed me a bar of soap. We had only been in the country a few hours, so this could not have been a comment on my personal hygiene. It was a linguistic mismatch. Crestfallen, but not wishing to lose face, I thanked the shopkeeper and paid him for the soap. It was days before I was willing to open the phrasebook again.

My first solo trip to foreign parts was just as traumatic. The incident took place in the shower. Cheap Italian hotels are distinguished by their poor plumbing, where it’s almost impossible to keep the water within the narrow confines of a bathroom. The water would go straight down the drain as long as one didn’t stand underneath it. This disrupts the whole system.

My shower was therefore interrupted by frantic hammering on the door, which I ignored. If you feel vulnerable speaking in a foreign language, doing so without clothes only adds to the sense of exposure.

It was only when I opened the door several minutes later and peered out that I understood the reason for the knocking. The water from my shower had left the bathroom, run under the door and down the corridor, taking time off to branch off into everyone else’s room as well.

I therefore felt the obligation at least to go down to reception and apologise, even though I could think of no way of preventing the same thing happening again.

Once more I reached for the trusty phrasebook. There was nothing in it about shallow showers and inadequate basins.

Indeed, there was only one phrase in the whole section on hotels which seemed at all appropriate, but it summed up the situation so perfectly that I took it to the manager at reception.

And there, in word perfect Italian, I declared: “Hot running water in every room!”

* Dr Chris Upton is Senior Lecturer in History at Newman University College, which is mercifully not in Berlin or Bologna.