My EssaY
Buona Notte and Good Night
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With two foreign words my love of language blossomed. Staying in a Sicilian's home while exploring Italy with my family at the age of ten, I realized the importance of communication. I fought the barrier that kept me from truly understanding my host. She taught me how to make pasta, I taught her how to make pancakes... in silence. The only emotions expressed were each other's quiet smiles.
Late one night I paused at the base of the stairs before heading off to bed. My youthful mind focused on forming the two words that would change my life forever. "Buona notte" I said in a barely audible whisper. "Good night" echoed back through the hall to my heart. Two languages, one meaning. I went to bed content that night, knowing I had broken the barrier. The connection I made to a woman who I had not known a few days before, was inspiring and exhilarating. Though the words we spoke were simple and shy, they demonstrated an effort to communicate. They made my world more expansive, and provided a new level of understanding of the people and cultures around me. I was captivated by the language, and the value it provided to me. Discovery, creativity and adventure, I realized then, were all achievable anywhere in the world. Through moving my lips and using my voice, I experienced a connection that would have been unattainable before.
Five years later, while attending the Middlebury-Monterey French Summer Language Academy, I stood in a kitchen full of intelligent young individuals puzzling over what to make of a recipe written completely in French. Foreign words, unknown to us decorated the page. Bound by our pledge to speak only French for one month, our childhood games of charades became an integral part of the learning process. Through the confusion I knew our goal was to make a pineapple upside-down cake. Simple words in my native language such as oven, mix, and pan proved to be a barrier in my ability to create a cake of a different culture. A lopsided, rather unappealing creation emerged from the oven at the end of class. With hesitation I tasted it and the perseverance and creative thinking necessary to make the “gâteau renversé à l'ananas” danced about my pallet as a delicious masterpiece. The joy my ten year old heart felt at the sounds of communication in Italy surfaced again in this dessert. My commitment to the language appeared in the work my peers and I crafted in the kitchen. English was ineffective in this situation, just as it had been in my experience in Italy, so we turned to the language that united us all: curiosity, creativity, determination and in this case, French.
I long to experience the joy I felt in Sicily when I could manage but two foreign words, the very joy I felt in the creation of my French dessert. My experiences in French and Italian have inspired me to delve deeper into other cultures, see the world through every lens, and to experience the meaning, in every language, of the verb “to understand."
