I mentioned in my last post the surprising level of anglicization I’ve encountered in Florence. It is too bad because often when I speak in Italian to employees at stores or restaurants, they often reply to me right away in English. I don’t know if this is because it’s obvious to them that I’m American or if they’re just so conditioned to defaulting to the more tourist-friendly English. After all, many of these towns in Italy are pretty dependent on tourism. In any case, hearing the English responses is discouraging to me when I’m trying to work on my Italian.
This past weekend, I took a trip to meet my brother in Padova, a smaller university town pretty close to Florence. It was a very nice, clean, peaceful little town that I had never been to. My favorite part was how little English I encountered as compared to in Florence. At restaurants my brother and I were able to use Italian. We went to a botanical garden and I was able to use my Italian to ask the cost of entry. I felt a bit more capable in terms of the language while in Padova because the city was so much less anglicized and we were able to get by fine by speaking our Italian.
We were in Padova on Sunday so we attended mass at the Basilica di Sant’Antonio. This was my second mass of my stay and I was able to follow more of it than the previous week, and I understood the general message of the homily. This was encouraging to me. Some pictures of the trip to Padova are attached.
The language lessons at my school continue to help me. They force me to be very careful with my pronunciation – as the only American in the class, I’m rather conscious of the others’ preconceptions of Americans and in particular of our lazy speech and pronunciation. I want to convince them otherwise, so I try to be very deliberate when I speak and read in the class. My ability to comprehend others in real time is improving as well.
