Trouble With Foreign Tongues

I couldn’t just restart my old blog. I had to switch to a completely different blogging platform. And then I couldn’t be satisfied with one of their pre-designed templates, I had to customize it. And customization means speaking the HTML. So there I was, in the land of Web Development, attempting to speak the HTML, with only the slightest idea of what I was doing. It was like being in Mexico, where I could say “hello” and “thank you,” but not “where is the museum and what time does it open?”

It also reminded me of the summer my friend Dee and I spent in Italy. To say we spoke Italian would be similar to me saying I speak the HTML. So I think what happened is that a charming bilingual bartender (right, Dee? he was a bartender?) convinced us that while traveling around his country, we needed to develop a signature phrase — some eloquent words in the Italian language that we could use in any situation where we didn’t really know what to say. Like during those awkward silences with a train conductor or a police officer. 

Our signature phrase was “I’m so sorry about the thunder - but let’s have some more wine!” We said this phrase at least 10 or 12 times a day - often just to each other - so became really proficient pronouncers of all the words. To this day, I can bark out that phrase in perfect Italian even if woken from a dead sleep.

Later, during our touring of the Tuscan countryside, we met some other Americans at a restaurant. After talking about everyone’s various Italian adventures, Dee and I shared our signature phrase. One of the American guys said he’d developed a signature Italian phrase also. His was “I have naturally curly hair.”

Before Clyde went on a trip to Costa Rica, I helped him learn some basic Spanish words. And I decided he needed a special signature phrase to really kick his Costa Rican experience up a notch.

Me: OK, so in addition to Hola! you need to learn a signature phrase.
Clyde: What does that mean?
Me: When you are checking into a hotel or ordering at a restaurant - if you don’t understand what they are saying, or just if it seems like it is your turn to talk, you would say this.
Clyde: What does the phrase mean?
Me: It roughly translates to “I apologize that my Spanish is not very good.”

What he didn’t know was that what I’d actually taught him to say was “I love to sing and I love to dance!”