Languages Across Europe

During the course of our travels, we have half-picked up semi-conversational pigeon versions of Islenska, Norwegian, Dutch, German, Belgique, French, and Italian. Throw in Jordan's surprisingly good grasp of conversational Spanish, Ivan's German, my less than stellar hook on greetings in Chinese and French, and Izzy's Italian musical knowledge, we were a hot mess of conversational ability.

I think we used all of them while dining out in restaurants; ordering in the native language based on menu items and saying please and thank you in other languages (because we'd forget which country we were in.) The kids still tell of a story that actually occurred stateside where we brought our Chinese exchange  student to a Chinese restaurant and I said por favor to order and she she (she'a she'a) to say thank you in Chinese. I was 50/50 on that dinner and the trend continued in Europe.

The similarities of Spanish and Italian and even the Latin or Germanic roots recognizable in almost all the written languages we encountered made it possible for us to read menus, generally figure out directions, and converse based on what we could read. If not full sentences at least we proved effort.

Sometimes our efforts were rewarded with pride by the natives - a smile to show they appreciated that Americans in their country thought enough to try out their native tongue. Other times it was a bizarre moment of silence, a quizzical look and then a response in English to let us off the hook...or put us to shame. I think our Italian local bus driver who we had at least twice en route or returning from Florence to Imprunetana was slightly entertained by our family of four boarding the bus and trying to pay. Sometimes he'd take our money, sometimes he'd simply wave us off to the back of the bus for our ride. I believe these were times when we had incorrect bus fare as its not advertised well on local stops and each day it was different.😐

We really provided entertainment as we boarded a packed bus back to Florence loaded with our packs and one extra bag-we hardly fit the aisles and the passengers had a good laugh at our expense. Of course, the beauty of laughter is that it is understood in every language and it always includes a smile.:)