Italian from his head to the fingers of his feet

My bilingual four-year-old is starting to understand when to use each of his languages – some form of English with his dad (“Can me put me pants under me undies?”), some form of Italian with his mom (“Can me put me pantoloni sotto mi mutande?”) and some form of ancient Aramaic with the cats.

It’s all cute. Four is cute, or “three plus one” as my son has insisted since having to give up his favorite number on his fourth birthday. What’s especially cute is that he thinks that because he speaks Italian he naturally comes from Italy, instead of from New Zealand, born to two English teachers. But judging from his exaggerated vowels, which have proven to be very handy when learning Maori at preschool, and his frequent direct translations into English, you might think he was right.

Here are a few more of my son’s recent grammatical, syntactical and lexical mistakes as he tries to sound as articulate in English as he can be in Italian:

“Get it you!” (from Prendilo tu!) Ah, the power of intonation to make an impact. And Italian has an additional superpower that my bossy little man can’t seem to relinquish – the power of flexible word order to make a point.

“Oh, my favorite carpet!” Something of a false friend to his four-year-old ears, this phrase is all about snuggling up on the couch on a chilly early morning (while buck naked) with his favorite wooly…coperta (blanket).

“the pooh of bird” Literally, cacca di uccello. One day my son will be astonished – and perhaps horrified – to learn that a noun (like “bird”) can magically transform into an adjective by simply putting it in front of another noun (as in “bird pooh”).

“too burro” Or troppo burro, too much butter. I do like the way this sounds, though: it’s quite catchy.

“I like this panino so much I want to die!” As a mother I might worry, but as the cook, I take it as the highest compliment: it’s a creative translation of Mi piace da morire, something like “I love it to death!”

“They’re mines.” You see how dangerous it can be to pluralize your possessive pronouns? Yet for some reason, this grammatically over-precise phrase has caught on with his four-year-old cousin (also a part-time Italian speaker) and his all-Kiwi three-year-old neighbor.

“I are!” (Literally, Lo sono!) I agree – irregular verb conjugations are hard in any language. So wouldn’t it be handy if at least the verb “be” were irregular in the same way across my son’s two languages? Wouldn’t it be handy if io sono (I am) and loro sono (they are) could match like that in English? In our house, they do.

“You don’t have to break it.” My son’s translation of Non devi romperlo, or “You mustn’t break it.” As an English teacher, I can tell you this is one of the last everyday verb twists for ESL students to grasp.

“la più grandest” Clearly, it’s the biggest! La più grande…

“It not was me!” Non sono stato io! Well, it not was me either to invent the English language! Let’s face it, English negatives are hell with all the modals and contractions, whereas Italian negatives are so gorgeously logical: just say non!

“fingers of feet” From le dita dei piedi, that is, the toes. In fact, through the Italian le dita delle mani (hands) and le dita dei piedi (feet), we can clearly see that they’re all just digits, really.

Cute, but also fascinating. Because by using such logic at age three plus one, my little Kiwi boy is starting to convince me that he may be, after all, Italian from his head to the fingers of his feet.

You're probably wondering

You’re probably wondering what in the heck happened to my publishing dream. Well, it’s still there, like the herpes I can’t get rid of. Like a pregnancy craving for prosciutto. Like a soul mate I can’t seem to give up on. Like the green ray that bursts forth a second before the sun hides behind the horizon; it may be an optical illusion but I have seen it once, that green pie in the sky.

I’m a believer.

It’s just that lately I’ve been too wrapped up in the roller coaster of daily life to put much effort into getting my manuscript published. I figure it’s been sitting in that drawer for so long anyway that a few more months won’t matter. But I like to think of this ‘time off’ not so much as literary stasis but as preparation for the next sprint. And I have been writing. To prove to you that my literary ambition is still alive, here’s a list of what I’ve been doing over the past few months:

· polishing / copyediting an (enormous) academic volume to be published by Brill in 2013

· discussing possible publishing contacts with one of Brill’s editors – but if I told you his name I’d have to kill you

· getting the first five chapters of my manuscript Lost in the Spanish Quarter translated into Italian in order to approach Italian publisher Einaudi, where I now have a contact

· co-writing a children’s film treatment, synopsis and pitch to be put forward for funding to the New Zealand Film Commission – but once again, I can’t tell you anything about this fabulous story without a murder charge

And if that weren’t all, I can’t help but want to start the16th edit of my manuscript. A little space from it does wonders.

Colon discomfort

Image from http://www.dumblittleman.com
/2009/12/dumblittleman-guide-to-colon-use.html

Yes, colon discomfort. But you’d be wrong to think that my recent long-haul flight back to New Zealand – with its dubious chicken or beef options – was the cause. We’re talking pure punctuation here.

As an English teacher and wannabe writer, I pride myself on my mastery of punctuation. I am intimately acquainted with the semicolon. I grasp the awesome power of starting a new paragraph. I fell in love with – and married – a man who knew how to talk to me about apostrophes. I quietly scorn writers with idiosyncratic capitalization and those who can’t punctuate the difference between a defining and a non-defining relative clause. Weren’t they paying attention in high school?

Yet I’ve been able to move on from high school too. I’ve long dropped the double space after a period taught to me in tenth-grade typing class, a vestige – as I am – from the typewriter days. I’ve kept up with more efficient changes in punctuation by dropping the unnecessary comma after “and” when listing names, countries and grocery items – this last phrase being an example.

OK, so I do indulge in an overuse of hyphens – they’re just so beautiful – but otherwise, I’m perfect.

But my punctuation confidence was shattered during a recent trip back to Washington, D.C., my hometown. It seems that in my absence they’d done something to the colon. I first noticed it months earlier in National Geographic, that there were instances where a capital letter followed a colon. Here’s a recent example:

“Nothing works here, Eduardo would cry, pounding the steering wheel of whatever car he’d hustled on loan for the day: The economic model is broken, state employees survive on their tiny salaries only by stealing from the jobsite…” (Gorney, Cynthia. Cuba’s New Now. National Geographic Nov 2012.)

The capital letter in “The” suggests the beginning a new sentence. If you’re going to start a new sentence, a separate idea, then why use a colon at all? Forgive me, but the colon I know would never dare infringe upon the sheer power of the full, independent sentence: instead it would keep to its humble yet immeasurably significant role of introducing or leading to the next idea, which is often a result or an explanation. For example:

“The landslide destroyed the town: thousands left in the aftermath.” (result)

“I’m exhausted: I stayed up all night cleaning cat pee off my mattress.” (explanation)

So what was National Geographic doing undermining the subtle role of the colon? As a lifelong reader of the magazine, I felt betrayed. With such a worldwide reputation, I thought, millions will copy their editors’ tainted use of the colon. Shouldn’t they be more responsible? How can they work for the protection of the planet but not defend the colon? Will the colon someday be extinct?

When I landed in the States this September, I was horrified to see the virus had already spread, so much so that it seemed National Geographical might not have been the perpetrator but simply another casualty. There was The Smithsonian…The New Yorker! Everywhere I looked, there was colon abuse. But my horror soon turned to discomfort.

Was it them or was it me? Had I missed a modern punctuation trend? Despite my efforts, have I now become as old-fashioned as the generation of double spacers and comma overkillers?

A new definition of prosciutto (Italian version)

C'è chi mi chiamerebbe pazza per aver tentato un volo da Auckland a Washington D.C., la mia città natale, con tre scali nel giro di 26 ore, viaggiando incinta di quattro mesi con un bambino di quattro anni. Ma io chiamerei pazzi quelli che non lo farebbero. E poi quale migliore occasione per indossare le calze antitrombo?

Gli unici problemi che ho avuto durante i vari voli erano piegarmi per prendere la mia borsa sotto il sedile davanti e convincere mio figlio a mangiare dei piselli che erano stati in eccessiva prossimità a una fetta di manzo inzuppato di sugo. Per lo meno ha mangiato un po' di pane col "prosciutto cotto", un termine che risulta a mio figlio bilingue molto più stuzzichevole che il fin troppo semplice "ham".

Se vogliamo però parlare di cose davvero stuzzichevoli, parliamo per un attimo del prosciutto crudo. Devo essere stata fuori di testa che quando vivevo a Napoli non lo mangiavo a tutti e tre i pasti. Ora mi resta solo sognare di avvolgermi in un tallieur di Armani fatto di prosciutto crudo e sdraiarmi su un divano di melone mentre mi infilo fichi nei capelli e mi lecco. Chi se ne fregherebbe che alla fine della giornata sarebbero in piena vista le mie smagliature e maniglie dell'amore? Ma almeno io posso dare la colpa di tali sogni ad occhi aperti ai miei ormoni: tu non hai nessuna scusa.

Dato che i salumi sono in cima alla lista di cose proibite per le donne incinte a causa del rischio che contengono la listeria che potrebbe indurre un aborto spontaneo, cosa poteva fare una poveraccia come me che soffriva del fuso orario quando sono stata, appunto, stuzzicata ad una festa con un vassoio di prosciutto crudo?

Ho pensato alla crudeltà che proprio il prosciutto e melone, la frutta avvolta in proteine magre, sia un piatto consigliato per le future mamme italiane. Dammi della pazza ma non ho potuto resistere. Dopo tutto, qui è la sede della confessione. Destramente ne ho inforcato tre fette per il mio piatto e sono corsa in cucina. Non c'era nessuno. Velocemente mi sono celata in un angolo buio e mi sono messa ad...

...assassinarlo nel microonde. Ho trasformato il mio prosciutto crudo in prosciutto cotto. O peggio ancora: pancetta. Ma per una povera cristiana privata come me che vive nella 'terra della lunga nuvola bianca' e delle tante pecore bianche, gustarlo è stato di un piacere strabiliante.

Per favore però, non andare dicendolo in giro in Italia.

A new definition of prosciutto

Some might call me crazy for attempting to fly from Auckland to my native Washington D.C. with three stopovers over 26 hours, travelling four months' pregnant with a four-year-old. But I might call crazy those who wouldn't. Besides, what better occasion to wear one's anti-thrombosis stockings?

The only problems I had on the various flights over were bending over to reach my bag under the seat in front of me and getting my boy to eat peas that had been in inappropriate proximity to a piece of beef with gravy. At least he ate some bread and prosciutto cotto, which is nothing fancier than a few slices of ham: it just sounds better when I translate it like that into Italian for my bilingual son.

If you really want fancy, let's talk prosciutto crudo. I must have been insane that when I lived in Naples I didn't eat it for three meals a day. Now all I can do is dream of wrapping myself in an Armani-tailored suit made of prosciutto crudo and lounging around on a cantaloupe day bed sticking figs in my hair and licking myself. Who would care if at the end of the day everyone could see my stretch marks and my love handles? But I can blame such daydreams on the hormones: you have no excuse.

Given that cold cuts (especially cured meats) are the top pregnancy prohibition in that they could be carrying miscarriage-triggering listeria, what was a poor jetlagged old girl like me to do when teased at a party with a platter of prosciutto crudo?

I thought how maddening it is that prosciutto e melone, fruit wrapped in lean protein, is a recommended meal for Italian would-be mothers. Call me crazy but I couldn't say no. After all, this is confession time. I skillfully forked three slices onto my plate and ran into the kitchen. No one was around. I quickly went to a dark corner and proceeded to...

...microwave the life out of it. I turned my prosciutto crudo into prosciutto cotto. Ham. Or perhaps worse: bacon. But for a deprived soul like me living in the land of long white cloud and the many white lambs, it was mind-blowingly delicious.

Just please don't tell any of my Italian friends.

How literary agents are like cats

Minky: "It wasn't me."

The other night I woke up to howling. Was it the young cat, Opossum, in heat? No. Since having her spayed on Tuesday, her hormones seemed to have taken pity on her. Was it the older cat Minky showing Opossum the pecking order? No. The younger cat didn’t appear to be in the bedroom at all and Minky had already taken her favorite spot, pinning me down on the bed. Was it my husband snoring? No. He was as quiet as an opossum.

The howling was coming from our four-year-old sleeping between us, on his second excruciating leg ache of the night. Under his little body writhing in pain, the sheet was wet; maybe he needed his night diaper changed too. But then why was his pyjama top wet? And my pyjamas? And the top of the blankets?

Even in the darkness, it didn’t take a Sherlock to realize that we’d been peed on. And that the culprit probably wasn’t the sedate, predictable and nearly toothless Minky breathing heavily on top of me, but the spritely young thing who’d just had her ovaries removed against her will. And we hadn’t been merely sprayed on, but thoroughly drenched by a water balloon of ammonia as we lay there dreaming.

It’s hard not to take it personally.

A literary agent too will say not to take their rejection personally. But that’s a bit hard when the letter is personally addressed to you. And yet at the same time, the communication style of a standard rejection letter feels just as indiscriminate and mysterious as getting sprayed at as a bystander in a turf battle.

This triggers a guessing game. If you’re like me, first you blame yourself. Where did I go wrong? Should I have been more assertive? Less assertive? Did I break all cat-rearing/agent-querying rules? I should have done my homework instead of being so impetuous and taking on someone I couldn’t handle. The problem is that it’s not clear what the rejection itself means: was it a form of sincere – though crass – communication – or was it just a random stress response? And how can you even be so sure that it was so-and-so who rejected you and not just her assistant? Were you really judged fairly then?

After your head begins to spin with all the guessing, you simply feel misunderstood. How could the cat not understand how much I love her? How could she not grasp what a cushy set-up she has here in this awesome house with lots of couches and a wild garden? How could the agent not grasp what a winner she had in her hands? Is she totally blind? She will live to regret this!

The disappointment is as leaden as the old cat asleep on your chest. And to think it seemed like the perfect match…

If these thoughts occur to you in the middle of the night, or if the urine has soaked all the way down through the mattress, you may not be able to get back to sleep. The darkness and the silence envelop you and you start to think in absolute terms. I can’t do this anymore. This is just one of many many instances. The aftermath is just too much work, especially with a kid, a part-time job, no dryer. What was I thinking? It’s just too much for me. I give up. First thing in the morning, she’s gone.

But then, despite everything a glimmer of hope creeps back in through the crack in the curtains – or is it the moon? You put on your dressing gown and get onto the internet. And surprise surprise: you find out you’re not alone. There are thousands and thousands of other people out there who have experienced exactly this kind of rejection and have made it through. They haven’t thrown out their manuscripts, their cat or their mattress. They have found solutions and survived. And you will too.

My Kiwi son still speaks English like a wop

Since shamefacedly taking two months’ unapproved leave (without pay) from blog writing, a few things in my life have changed. A copyediting deadline has lifted and so has the forehead wrinkle between my brows; my eyesight has considerably improved too. I now have time for National Geographic and The Biggest Loser. Or sometimes in the evenings I indulge in this really amazing new practice called sleeping. I have reconciled with the spiritual world. I now make my nachos with black beans and ground beef. And my son has turned four.

Well, not exactly four but “three plus one”, or “tre più uno”, to hold onto that favorite number for a bit longer. He likes to do things his own way, including speech. But such originality in manipulating language comes as no surprise: my four-year-old is a half-American, half-Irish, New Zealand-born bilingual Italian-English speaker. Now try saying that five times fast. In Maori.

His Italian has up till recently far surpassed his English. In fact, his Italian vocabulary remains overall more impressive, as he pulls out words like “paleontologo” (paleontologist) and “schiacciasassi” (roadroller), and he still claims to not understand Scooby Doo at all unless it’s in Italian. All these moments make me feel vindicated as a mostly stay-at-home mom doing her best to raise a child bilingually. So even though I’m starting to hear the English creeping in and taking over more and more every day, I try to pay it no mind. I ignore the fancy colloquialisms (“What in the heck is that?”), the Kiwisms (“Cool, eh?”) and the inaccurate but still shocking indecencies picked up from gosh knows where (“Stop it, you’re f***ing me out!”).

Instead I choose to focus on the Italianisms that linger in his English, the endearing mistakes that shed insight onto his churning four-year-old mind while making his nose crinkle and his lips pucker in a totally cute way that – for just an instant – make him truly look three plus one. Here are a few recent examples:

“Wake yourself up!” I too think that English just doesn’t have enough reflexive verbs, like svegliarsi, but I try not to worry myself about it and to relax myself instead.

“Don’t worry of me. I’m going at the museum.” In his head, my little automatic translator justifiably chooses to render the Italian preposition di as the English “of” and a as “at”. But of course if English prepositions were that tidy, we ESL teachers would be out of a job. Andare a scuola = go to school; vivere a Napoli = live in Naples; parlare al telefono = talk on the phone.

“Look at the persons.” Correct, but in a dorky European way.

“Me don’t never feel tired.” Ah, the double negative of childhood, as good as sweet strawberries dipped into the sugar bowl. However, for my son this is a well thought-out grammatical choice based on his knowledge of Italian – Non mi sento mai stanco. And you’d better believe he means it.

“Give it to she.” In spoken Italian, “she” (subject) and “her” (object) is just lei. Just like “he” and “him” is just lui. In that way, lei can give it to lui and lui can give it back to lei. Now that’s handy.

“I don’t know how they look.” They look with their eyes! his dad must have been thinking as he heard this while playing with our little man yesterday. But this is a direct translation of come as “how”, from Non so come sono fatti, meaning, “I don’t know what they look like.” Sometimes I don’t know how his father understands him!

“Tell me.” Ah, one of my favorite sayings in Italian that is just impossible to translate into English. Dimmi, literally “tell me”, is a way of saying that you’re truly listening, you’re ready for someone to potentially open their deepest, darkest secrets to you. You’re crying? Dimmi. You saw the coolest thing today? Dimmi. You have a new favorite number? Dimmi.