Con la lingua

It would be hard to get across how much I hated languages at school. I was a self-declared anti-linguist.

Maths and sciences came easily enough. I loved history, especially when it became so modern that it was really politics. English never felt like work because I was always reading anyway.

But French. French was torture. And two terms of German were, if anything, worse.

Every Tuesday afternoon there was a double lesson. Another single one on Friday morning. Mr Collins battled manfully with teenage mayhem, school cuts and a Yorkshire accent to teach us the basics. Sophia, thanks to a French grandmother, would politely correct his accent, replying to his questions in effortless French. Depending on my mood, I would skip class, play the fool, or sullenly stare out the window.

Did I mention how much I hated French? And Sophia. Though I think I had a crush on her really.

Looking back, I was scared. I had moved to Yorkshire from Manchester a few years earlier, and my accent made me stand out and got me into trouble more than once. I changed my accent a little. But I also learned to keep my mouth shut so as not to expose myself to ridicule. So, I was scared of the language. And I was certainly scared to tell myself how I felt about Sophia. Never mind tell her. I told myself I hated French. It was easier than admitting I was frightened of speaking it. Easier still to pretend I hated Sophia.

Then I got busy with life. University. A career. A marriage. A family. There was no time for learning a language. And, besides, I was terrible at languages. Wasn’t I?

At times I would hear others speak another language. I would sneer, but, Lord, I was jealous. They were in a world I thought I wasn’t allowed into. And much as I told myself I didn’t want to go there, I would catch a glimpse of something that I was missing. It was like walking past a packed pub on a Friday night, convinced everyone belonged there except you. So, I walked on.

Then I turned fifty.

I’d left my first career behind. My family had grown up and needed me less. I had time, which meant I had no ready excuse. And I wanted to face my demon. But not the French démon. And not the German dämon.

I’d loved Italy every time we’d been there. We’d even bought a house in Tuscany. I loved being there, but I was an outsider. It was time to find the demone, call him by his name, and see if perhaps we could become friends.

Several years later, I can happily spend my days working in Italian, even if I'll never mistake myself for a natural. I have completed a Master’s in the language, culture and history of a country that now feels like a second home. I have written a bilingual screenplay and have embarked on both a novel and a stage play that also plays with both languages.

People often say a second language is a bridge. I always thought the drawbridge was up. It turned out I was the one holding the rope.

But I don’t want to evangelise about the pleasures of expressing yourself in a second language, even though I feel it. I don’t want to go on about how it’s given me access to another world that I’d spent half a lifetime walking past. Though that’s true too.

What I'd really like to say isn't to you, but to the thirteen-year-old me sitting in that French classroom. It's okay not to be good at something. Don't mistake fear for inability. Don't spend thirty years believing a story about yourself that happened not to be true.

The pleasure was never in becoming fluent. It was in discovering that I wasn't the person I'd told myself I was.

Si può combattere il demone con la lingua.