When I was nine years old,
the unthinkable happened.
My loving parents
decided to uproot pre-teen me
from my cozy elementary school
and all of my friends -
just imagine the horror -
to spend a year
in beautiful northern Italy.
So, naturally, I stomped my feet,
I clenched my hands
into itty-bitty fists of rage,
and I glared
at my supernaturally patient parents
over babyish picture books
with titles like:
"Easy Italian for Complete Beginners."
But my parents would not be reasoned with.
So I said my tearful goodbyes,
exchange a BFF locket or two,
and off I went.
That plane ride felt like
tumbling through a washing machine.
I have never been afraid of flying,
but I remember being shocked
to have arrived completely in one piece,
not even a little bit scrambled.
I hadn't quite expected
to be the very same person
on another side of the Atlantic,
in my new home.
Those first few days were way too hot,
and I was way too tired
for anything like culture shock.
I did learn that Italian bars are
nothing like American bars.
They sell coffee and pastry for one,
and they don't mind if you wander in
unsupervised to buy a lollipop,
even if you can barely reach the counter.
And I learned that real-life people
do actually say "Mamma mia."
Otherwise, I was pretty insulated
amongst my family in Milan.
I clung to English conversation
like a security blanket,
knowing it would soon disappear,
because we cannot stay in Milan forever.
Instead, we boarded
a train so heavily graffitied
we had to squint to make out
the passing fields
through the neon windows.
And on a muggy Thursday, in late summer,
we arrived in our ghost town.
Ferrara likes to call itself
the city of bicycles.
And while it is true that you'll see
everyone from chain-smoking teenagers
to elderly shoppers,
to businesswomen in shiny heels
pedaling through its cobblestone streets,
it's mosquitoes that really rule the lands
once provided over
by the wealthy Este family
whose castle, moat and all,
still stands in the town center.
On the day we arrived,
the castle, and its neighbor,
the white and rose cathedral, rustier,
all was blanketed in silence.
Soon, we would see the piazza
bustling and bartering,
and decked out in colorful
scarves at market time,
the park filled with chants and shrieks,
and murmured invocations
for the historic Palio,
in the cafes
and their steady morning routine.
But we had unknowingly
stumbled into a townwide siesta,
so our new home greeted us
only in hushed whispers.
Ferrara is moderate enough
that we're not expected to learn
the dying local dialect, Ferrarese,
but not so touristy that we can
coast by on English alone.
Italian is unavoidable,
especially at school,
So, the quiet finally shatters
on my first in fourth grade.
It is, hands down, the most
cinematic moment of my short life.
My 20-odd classmates
have been in the same group
with the same teacher even, for years.
So, I'm not just the American,
I'm also the new kid.
I'm a bit too tall,
which is a new and completely
unexpected problem for me.
I'm a bit antsy in my weird school smock,
and, of course, I'm late.
For a while, everything sounds
a little bit like rushing water.
But eventually, almost without
my noticing, I adjust.
I learn Mediterranean history
and photosynthesis,
and the latest playground gossip,
and somewhere in between,
I figure out Italian.
My teacher is the lifeline.
At first she offers to translate
her lectures for me.
But she rarely does, and I really ask.
Instead, she sits with me
during English lessons,
and lets me chat with her.
I very quickly discover
that my talkativeness
knows no linguistic bounds,
and she introduces me to
poems and stories.
I'd like to share with you a piece
from my favorite Italian
children’s author, Gianni Rodari.
It’s about a little boy named Giovannino
who ventures through outlandish worlds.
I will read the original text,
but a translation is provided on
screen for your convenience.
Giovannino Perdigiorno
ha perso il tram di mezzogiorno,
ha perso la voce, l’appetito,
ha perso la voglia di alzare un dito,
ha perso il turno, ha perso la quota,
ha perso la testa (ma era vuota),
ha perso le staffe, ha perso l’ombrello,
ha perso la chiave del cancello,
ha perso la foglia, ha perso la via:
tutto è perduto fuorché l’allegria.
So, I share this piece for a few reasons.
First, there's nothing else quite like it.
There's nothing exactly analogous
to Italian filastroche in English.
They're a shade more grown-up
than our nursery rhymes,
a tad cheekier than our odes,
and a hint sweeter than our riddles.
And there's nothing
quite like this little filastrocca
and its unmistakably universal message.
No other Gianni Rodari,.
no other Giovannino.
How is it that Giovannino can be so lost
and yet unquestionably happy.
In this unassuming poem,
Rodari teaches us that it may
not be such a paradox after all.
It's an elegant conclusion
because on some level we already knew.
Maybe we just lack
the words to articulate the joy
common to dizzying new encounters
and listless summer days,
the mindless peace
that is being totally lost.
There must then be so many
other little truths like this one,
just waiting for us to decode them.
Isn't it thrilling to imagine
that the answers you’ve been
looking for all of your life
could really be out there,
just in Swahili or Gaelic or Thai?
That, to me, is the beauty of language
in a day and age in which we all too often
think of other languages
as tedious obstacles to commerce,
or worse yet,
as relics to be swept away
in a tide of globalization.
I cling to the promise
that language learning offers,
not just of cultural,
but of personal enlightenment.
Second, I share this piece in particular
because I see myself,
I see nine-year-old Ella in Giovannino.
When we arrived in Ferrara,
I lost my bearings.
I lost my vocabulary.
When I stepped into
my 4th grade classroom,
just about the only things
I could reliably say were:
"Hi, my name's Ella," and, "'Sidewalk.'"
Only one of which, as you might imagine,
was at all useful.
I even lost some
of my little kid confidence,
that combination of too many sugar rashes,
an already overactive imagination,
egged on by my insatiable
appetite for books
that made me a a know-it-all,
long before I figured out my times tables.
Like Giovannino, I was adrift
in an unfamiliar world.
So, I did what he would do,
what anyone would do.
I leaned in.
I wandered.
OK.
Since my family's here,
and I'm not sure if they're
completely above heckling,
I'll admit that I dragged my feet.
A little
Maybe I kept my mouth shut
for the first few months
out of fear of mispronouncing something.
I was convinced for a time
that I'd mess up an accent here,
a verb tense there,
and somehow come up with
a terrible curse word,
with my luck, probably in front of nuns.
Maybe I pretended to hate the pizza place
around the corner from our apartment
because I really hated when my parents
would make me call in the takeout order,
and face the bone-chilling dread
of follow up questions.
The point is that I learned to be lost,
if only because I had few alternatives,
and ultimately I was
all the happier for it.
During our stay in Italy,
we visited Venice several times,
since it's only a short
train ride from Ferrara.
But we never saw what many
would call its principal attraction,
the Basilica di San Marco.
Instead, through sometimes
unintentional wandering.,
we became well acquainted
with the spindly stone bridges
that crisscross its back alleys,
with the innumerable artisans
of glassware, and masks,
and especially gelato,
and with the milling flocks of pigeons
in the great church's shadow.
Any Venetian scholar worth their salt
can tell you that to miss out
on the majesty of San Marco,
not once, but four times,
is a shame, if not a cross-cultural crime.
With all due respect, I have few regrets.
Checking off every item
on your bucket list
is also a sure-fire way
to miss out on the mentalities,
which let you truly believe in a place
and see yourself as part of it.
Sometimes, it's better
to take the side streets.
So, my takeaway from plunging
headfirst into a second language,
in a brand new country,
is something like this:
Get lost.
Muddle through a foreign film.
Mispronounce every word in the dictionary.
Memorize Inigo Montoya's
signature greeting from The Princess Bride
in your target language
before you know how to properly
introduce yourself.
I won't pretend that immersion is easier.
It's inherently disorienting
and frequently terrifying.
It’s also fun in a way that other,
more clinical, methods aren’t.
In the years since my time abroad,
I've studied first Greek,
then French, then Japanese,
at three different Delaware schools,
and each time the process
was virtually unrecognizable
from what I had experienced in Italy.
Naturally, complete immersion
was impossible.
At some point I had to go home
and bicker with my brother
in good old English.
Still, there was something
definitely lacking in these curricula
which nagged at me.
After all, how could such rich traditions
be reduced to cite words
and conjugation tables?
Language instruction, as currently
practiced in much of the US
is perfectly serviceable.
It teaches unglamorous necessities like:
"Where is the bathroom?"
and, "My cousin's wife's
favorite color is brown,"
you know, the absolute essentials.
But such a shallow approach fails to see
languages as anything more than tools.
And while for us, as temporary speakers.
they might as well be,
other people live in them.
They dream and joke and fight
and reach out each day
in this precious artifact
that we so casually borrow,
and just as easily cast aside
When we just parrot prepackaged phrases,
picking up a language
because it's convenient,
because it's a grade,
because we really just need
to know where the bathroom is,
we buy into something
that I call linguistic tourism.
It's a superficial highlight reel
that fades as quickly as a sunburn.
But it works right?
And I truly believe
there is a time and a place for it.
We certainly can't explore every
nook and cranny of every language.
But when we have the opportunity,
we can, and should, go further.
Linguistic tourism, which sidesteps
art and culture and ingenuity,
is not the end all, be all;
sometimes you have
to take the side streets.
If we reframe our goals
for language learning,
leaving aside hollow benchmarks,
like 100 vocab words,
or 10 phrases of small talk fodder,
in favor of the development
of mutual respect
between teacher and student
or foreigner and native speaker.
in favor of greater accessibility
and integrity in the learning process,
in favor of the conservation of that
which makes languages beautiful,
what are we left with?
Not an approach which divorces
culture from language,
encouraging students to transpose
their thoughts literally,
rather than inviting them
to discover the untranslatable.
Not a system which prioritizes
memorization over comprehension
in the subjective beast that is grammar,
over expression,
Not the classrooms and textbooks
which strip away
all the loveliness of cadence,
and humor and nuance.
Not linguistic tourism.
We're left instead
with something more playful.
We have, for instance, a new
tradition in my household.
Each morning, my parents
watch a soap opera, "Un posto al sole,"
about a scandal-ridden
apartment building in Naples.
Highly recommend it
if you haven't seen it.
Between that and Italian word order
I am actually completely convinced
that my mom is well on her way
to becoming a high-powered,
yet street smart, businesswoman
in southern Italy.
Languages truly open so many doors, right?
And language learning does not
have to be practical to be worthwhile.
So, I urge you to learn a language
just to chat with a friend
on public transit,
to read puzzling foreign books,
just because you’re bored
of American tropes
and to rewatch probably
clumsily dubbed versions
of your favorite childhood blockbusters.
You don't have to wait
for an international vacation
to expand your own world.
You just have to learn to be
a little bit lost and a little bit free,
wherever you are.
Thank you.
(Applause)
