Tuesday, 02 October 2007

The language factor in Rome

It's pretty apparent I cannot speak a word in Italian... Tried to learn a few words this morning and it was quite embarrassing...

It's interesting how, when one is not familiar with something, one tends to associate it with "other" less familiar things even if not related. For example, can't speak a word in Italian...I start thinking maybe my 10 word vocabulary in French might help!

Is it that outrageous? Well, I decided to do a little research and one of the most dependable sources on languages around the world tells me that Italian has 89% lexical similarity with French! see http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=ita

But then again, speaking with people (e.g. asking for directions or trying to find out the price of something) doesn't depend on lexical similarity!

This thing of "feeling" mono-lingual is not good...

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