At the time of this post I am still in Rome, and I have to say that one of the most persistent factoids about Italians is in my experience demonstrably false.
The factoid is commonly found in travel guides which provide sage advice for foreigners in Italy. It is commonly stated in a passage similar to this:
If the traveller attempts to speak a little Italian (no matter how poor or ineffectual), his or her Italian interlocutor will be pleased, and will bend over backwards to help answer queries, provide advice etc in English.
This claim is a pack of lies and I can prove it. Today, when I approached museum guards, transport officials, banking officials and tourist guides, I first spoke Italian to them before asking my question in English. I can provide the exact passage: "Al fresco, spagetti bolognese, lamborghini, al dente, cappuccino". When this smattering of Italian had no effect, I poked them in the chest and shouted thus: "I SAID, AL FRESCO, SPAGHETTI BOLOGNESE, LAMBORGINI, AL DENTE, CAPPUCHINO - NOW SPEAK TO ME IN ENGLISH!"
Not only did they ignore me after this thoroughgoing attempt to establish a productive relationship, some of them even became aggressive.
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The Skeptic's Field Guide by Theo Clark and Jef Clark is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
4 comments:
All your recent posts lead me to believe you're making a documentary, entitled "Jef - Cultural Learnings of Italy for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Australia". The picture I've linked to confirms it.
The response to this was surely - 'Eh you musta be Australian - you musta know my cousin Luigi from Brunswick'
Ah Theo my son, that picture was priceless. I spilt coffee on my keyboard when I hit the link. Borat the movie... best comedy... ever!
I would just be happy to be in Italy right now, doing anything!
Reasons Greetings! From The US of A.
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