For the last two weeks I’ve been torturing myself. It started innocently enough with me making a shot of espresso. No, the espresso isn’t torturing me. I don’t make the best espresso but I’ve yet to poison myself or do permanent damage to my remaining insides. No that wasn’t it. What it was was the label. It taunted me into thinking in Italian. Or rather, trying to think in Italian.

I’ve heard the true mark of fluency is thinking the language you are speaking. Thinking in your native language, transposing to the interpreted language, then speaking (or hearing in the interpreted language, transposing, then understanding) works, but you miss the nuances that make any language magical. In its language of course. Now this is all theoretical because I haven’t thought in Italian in well over 50 years. And frankly, back then I wasn’t so good at it. Back then I wasn’t so good thinking in English!

So why the sudden thought to think in some language other than that in which over 100% of my conversations occur? (For the math wizards, I’m including those conversations in dreams.) It was that darn label. Medaglia d’Oro. All together now, Gold Medal. Even those without a non-food Italian word in their vocabulary can think that one through, with or without mental transpositioning. Clearly it’s all the general anesthesia I’ve been given lately that convinced me I could speak Italian again.

Okay, “again” is relative. The last time I really knew as sure as I could what people were saying when they were saying it in that language was 1963. ish. That’s when my grandma, my mother’s mother, the last of the nonne e nonni, passed away. And with her passed the custom of speaking Italian in the house but only English outside. Which was really good advice for even though the little town I grew up in was heavily populated with first generation Italians, the were from a variety of villages from 3 separate regions, each with its own dialect that could be almost as foreign as English. Thus English was the natural language to speak outside the home (imagine that) but Italian was fine for family conversations. As my generation entered school, English became the full time language taking a break only at large family gatherings on Sundays and holidays.

About 10 years ago I had a grand idea of refreshing my familial language and enrolled in “Italians for Tourists” at the local community college. It seemed to fit since there was also the possibility of a Mediterranean wine cruise and I thought it might be nice to be able to understand what was going on in at least one country’s vineyards. Well, that was a waste of $37!

With that failed experiment on my language resume it’s no wonder the last two weeks have been torture. I’ve finally come to realize that linguistic thinking, like playing nice with others, is learned easily in our youths but fades quickly when not in constant use. I think I’ll stop trying to think in Italian. And I’ll think it in English!

As for playing nice with others. That’s something I can keep working on in any language.