On the Butcheration of Language

The brain only seems to have two tracks when it comes to languages: Native and Foreign.

Try to say something in a non-English language and the brain just latches onto the most accessible foreign translation.

The most commonly latched language? Spanish!
. . . Joanna asking for two pieces of fruit in the market: ¡Dos!
. . . Me to the waiter: Gracias.
. . . Me to someone I bumped into: ¡Ay, perdon!

Others aren't so predictable in their language-latching and mix up multiple languages:
. . . Sarah at the Vatican: Bonjour! Dov'è, uh, post office?
And in case you didn't catch that, she just covered French, Italian, Groan of despair, and English!

Or there's the whole forgetting of the rules of pronunciation:
. . . Me at the fruit store asking for apples and a peach: Due mele e un pesche, per favore.
. . . In translation, if I had pronounced it correctly: Two apples and a peaches, please.
. . . But since I had said 'peshay' instead of 'pesque' I really said: Two apples and a fish, please.


Hah!


I've been trying to learn Italian by assuming no one speaks English (so that I won't be tempted to just speak English). But the Italians don't quite cater to my mental approach.

Take this short exchange between myself and the local organizer of the Cortona Fortress art exhibition at the opening of the exhibit:
. . . Me: Come si chiama?
. . . She: ____. And you?
. . . . . . (Yeah, I forgot her name. Bad Fern!)
. . . Me: "Mi chiamo Fern."
. . . She: "Nice to meet you."
. . . Me: "Piacere!"
She then laughed at how, in this exchange, the American spoke Italian and the Italian spoke English. "I'm trying to learn!" I explained--in English, because I have no idea how to say that in Italian.

At the gelato store a week or two ago, a similar situation occurred where the Italian would only speak to me in English. (I suppose my accent when I'm attempting Italian clearly gives me away as an American!)
. . . Me: Stracciatella in una, uh, coppa, per favore.
. . . . . . ('in' being Italian, not an insertion of English!)
. . . She: Which size?
. . . Me: Uno quaranta.
. . . . . . (as in the 1,40 euro size cup)
. . . She: Uno ochenta?
. . . Me: Uno quaranta. Um, quarenta. Quaranta?

I finally just pointed (gestures do wonders!) and gave up my Italian-only attempts.
. . . Me: Do you say "coppa?"
. . . . . . (In reference to the gelato cup.)
. . . She: COppa
. . . . . . (i.e. I was far too monotonous in my pronunciation!)
. . . She: Or coPENta.
. . . . . . (Which has worked wonders for me at gelato stores since it seems to refer to the smallest available cup.)
. . . Me: Ah, grazie!

But really, non-verbal gestures do transcend the verbal language. At a bar/restaurant in a non-touristy area of Florence, a cute little dessert that looked like a fruit tart caught my eye.
. . . Me: Come si dice {jab finger in the direction of the delectable dessert}?

I hear the woman behind the bar say 'pignon.' I even repeat 'pignon' and receive an affirmative nod. So I take my newly learned dessert word and head to the cash register to order:
. . . Me: Un pignon, per favore.
. . . She: Un mignon?
. . . Me: (with incredible emphasis on the P) Pignon!

She gives up on this foreigner and resorts to gesture, forming a small hole with her thumb and index finger and giving me a questioning look.
. . . Me: (excitedly grinning and nodding) Si!!
I get the receipt. It says 'mignon.' Whoops. It's a good thing I didn't try ordering with a word-for-word Italian translation of "fruit tart."

I frequently wonder what my broken attempts at Italian sound like to native speakers. How painful my butchering of their language must be to their ears! It's not just the constant mess-ups in grammar, gender and the like, it's also the butchering of the accent and the lack of musicality of American attempts at Italian.

We could just take a different route and embrace the meeting of Italy and the American South (since this program is through the University of Georgia) with this hilarious but sometimes cringe-inducing phrase adorning our dorm's message board:

"Ciao Ya'll!"

Note that almost all the requests are for blankets... It's getting chilly here! And look! I'm reflected at the bottom!

It's a miscellaneous post...

...Striped sacred spaces continue...

Last Saturday we had a black and white striped Duomo in Orvieto. This Saturday's color combination of choice? Pink and white stripeys! (At the Basilica di S. Chiara in Assisi.)

...And today's dose of graffiti...

Mirys was here at a scenic spot overlooking the piazza next to the Lower church of the Basilica of Saint Francis in Asissi and the surrounding countryside. It's just a few weeks old. (Not a few centuries old like last week's graffiti!)
And EMO with a handy dandy pronunciation guide (IMOH!!) just in case you're tempted to Italianize it by incorrectly saying "ay-moh." Heeh!

And art!

There's an art exhibition that opened today at the Fortezza (i.e. fortress) of Cortona and we University of Georgia students were invited (on very short notice, may I add) to submit work for it. So here I am with my very first woodblock print at today's opening reception!

My print is handily positioned next to the wine and snack table =)

We can now say that we've exhibited our work in a show in Italy.

How's that for a resume entry? =D

On Great Art and Graffiti

Apparently I'm the art major who doesn't care about amazing art done by various masters of ages past.

Art on a wall, in a museum, in a cathedral, and so on... they always seem to be outside of time. They're preserved, restored, roped off, and often seen outside of their original context. And after a while, it all looks the same.

Some art does inspire me. But other times, most notably after visiting the Ufizzi Museum in Florence, all that art just made me never want to create art again. We clearly have too much of it so why on earth should I add more to the clutter? ART OVERLOAD!!

We went to Orvieto this past Saturday and saw the Last Judgment fresco cycle by Signorelli in the Duomo. (Which, on a side note, reminded me of a fun house due to the black and white striped marble exterior!) According to the New York Times Travel section, this is "one of the Renaissance's greatest fresco cycles." Good to know.

Inside the chapel that housed these great Signorelli frecoes, everyone stood around, heads craned uncomfortably, to get a view of all the flesh and decay of Signorelli's work. (Take a gander! Here and here.)

I looked. And my neck hurt.

Other art students took out their sketchbooks to record whatever details struck their fancy. I whipped out my sketchbook (well, journal) but for an entirely different subject.

Graffiti.

From the 1500's!

Now THAT'S history - a far more fascinating expression and mark of presence than a great Signorelli.

So I spent the majority of my time in the chapel staring at two walls (conveniently at eye level for the salvation of my neck) copying graffiti. I pointed out the scratches to several others but no one else seemed to find it as spiffy and mind blowing as I did.


Dasvbbiano? Dasubbiano? From Arezzo, I'm guessing, in 1540! Or Francescho in 1536. Who were these people? What were their lives like? What did they look like? Did they get in trouble for scratching their names into the wall? Was the chapel a sacred space for them? Or maybe they were bored kids tired of going to church with their parents? When did that space become a look-but-don't-use-or-touch place you have to pay to get into with barriers set up to prevent a wayward viewer from getting too close to the now revered walls?

The 400+ year old graffiti made me notice every bit of modern graffiti I came across while wandering through the streets of Orvieto.


How about some "Hello moto!!" on recent public art? Or declarations of love to a pursued Pulcina scattered around several buildings in the town?


Apparently the human desire to leave a mark of presence, to somehow or another mark a location as a place that you were physically at, is hardly a new phenomenon.

Is the creation of art an expression of that same desire?

On Clouds and Bladders

27Aug--LAX--Minneapolis/St. Paul--12:10p--5:46p--42F
27Aug--Minneapolis/St. Paul--Amsterdam--7:35p--10:55a--33A
28Aug--Amsterdam--Rome (Fiumicino)--1:40p--3:55p--21F

I specifically picked window seats on each of my flights. Just my luck, the window of seat 42F is dirty and slightly maimed. I guess seatguru.com doesn't cater to stare-out-the-window-and-don't-care-about-leg-room-(yay shorties!) people. So I'm left, camera in hand, craning my neck backwards to make use of the very clean and clear window behind me.

I like windows.

And clouds...

Whipped cream, cotton balls, melded dippin' dots, towers, an occasional teddy bear or crocodile… you get the idea. And when the light shines in such a way to make the clouds bright white with a golden glow on the edges, I could easily be convinced that angelic type beings live up here.

One of my favorite moments (I'm enjoying the moments, Mooder!) is when it's blindingly bright and sunny and a thick layer of clouds stretches endlessly underneath us... no breaks or holes to hint at the existence of the real world below.

Then, descent.

I wonder if these clouds will be nice to us and let us pass through without stomach dropping turbulence?

I personify everything.

We break through the bottom of the cloud layer to find that the world still exists below. The contrast is startling-- this world is darker with an entirely different quality of light, filtered through the thick layer of clouds. Less pure but more interesting perhaps?

Then.

Oh dear.

My bladder doth protest.

And there's an hour left. And standing (erm, well, sitting) between me and the restroom are two people, both absorbed in their own worlds either napping or reading, with half-filled cups and wrappers sitting mockingly on their open trays.

I hate disturbing people unless absolutely necessary. I declare this not 100% necessary. Hear that bladder? NOT 100% necessary!! An hour to go... my bladder can handle this...

Except for the extra delay in landing due to turbulence.

Stupid clouds. How quickly they turn from imagination sparkers to bladder killers.

Then the endless taxiing.

Then the sitting--far from the gate--because another plane is now sitting at our gate. Freaking window seat! Once a portal to another world, now a portal to the emergency room because of bladder, erm, burstage.

Then at the gate... waiting for all the people in the 41 rows in front of me to get a move on. Yeah, I picked seat 42F because, you guessed it, I wanted a window seat.

Beauty out the window or practicality in an aisle seat for my ridiculously tiny bladder?

The answer came toward the end of the 8 hour flight that brought me over the Atlantic to Amsterdam. Out the window lay my first view of European soil (since 2003, that is) laid out in the form of the coast of the Netherlands. The clouds are above, the waves are crashing below...

The view is gorgeous.

The window seats were worth it.

And my bladder can totally deal with it.

On felcearto

Fern is in Italy so it's only fitting that the title of this blog should be fern lim(b) in Italian. And fittingly, arto (limb) looks surprisingly like the English word art, which is, of course, what Felce (Fern) is here in Italy for. Clear as mud?

I make no promises to the frequency of updates or consistency of style on this blog nor do I make any promises regarding the interesting-ness or informative-ness of it. It's just another record of my semester abroad… except that it can be accessed by anyone. Ah, how creepy thou art, oh internet!

Currently in: Cortona.
Have been in: Rome, Viterbo, Florence
Will be in: Who knows? I'm open to suggestions…

The internet here is spotty. Like a dalmation. Hence the post to come on clouds and bladders whose events actually occurred a week and a half ago.

Blame the dalmation.