The similarities between Italian and Spanish make them deceptively close – but not interchangeable.
Living in Italy has made Italian my default ‘foreign’ language, so I tend to lapse into Italian at the drop of a verb wherever I am, and realize it only when people look at me uncomprehendingly. I noticed this last week when we went to the Canary Islands, which are part of Spain.
My college Spanish is not so good that I’m readily understood, especially when I first arrive. I tend to speak, at best, a tutti frutti of the two languages, and to understand only a small portion of what’s said to me in Spanish.
So imagine my surprise on my second day on Fuerteventura to have a woman walk up to me in a little village and tell me that the owner of the café next to the church had told her that in half an hour there would be a small procession going around the church. Delighted that I had understood every word so easily, I thanked her for the information. As she walked across the little plaza, I realized that I had answered her in Italian. But she seemed to have understood.
Then I realized why. She has spoken to me in Italian. About then I noticed that my husband, across the square, was engaged in an animated conversation with her husband. It turned out that they were from Rome.
We all had a good laugh over our little comedy of errors and they gave us their e-mail address, along with an invitation to visit them when we were next in The Eternal City. We were neighbors meeting in a foreign land, even though Rome and Verona are a day’s travel apart. Small world, isn’t it – especially when you speak the same language.
