Tuesday 17 December 2013

An Italian moment

I mentioned recently in a post about mulled wine the restaurant dinner with Odin's former owners. What I did not mention then, because I wanted to write a blog post about it, is that the waiter was Italian. He could also speak a fairly good French, which he was eager to use, so he spoke to me in French, but knowing he was Italian, I said my usual: "Io parlo bene italiano ma non capisco una sola parola". I say it as often as I can. It always has the same effect: the native Italian speaker thinks I am fluent in Italian, sometimes even thinks I am Italian myself. Sometimes I sound like a Southerner, a Neapolitan, a Roman, this time it was a Northerner. I am an all round the map pseudo-Italian. Anyway, he quickly saw that I was not a native, but just for the effect the line made, I think it deserves to be considered a great unknown line from now on, if I haven't listed it among them before. I talked as much as I could in Italian that night when ordering. Moral of the story: there is none. It was simply an Italian moment.

2 comments:

Debra She Who Seeks said...

Hahahaha, that's great! No one ever mistakes me for pseudo-French when I speak French, LOL!

Guillaume said...

The funny thing is that I never speak like the same native.