Sophie Abitbol shares about her quest to learn a new language.
The first time I traveled to Italy 32 years ago, I decided I was going to learn the language. I put a book to study Italian into the backpack I was going to carry around over the next twelve weeks on trains, ferries and buses. But, because I have the gift of falling asleep anywhere, I never made it past one sentence, “Ha delle camere libere per domani?” It means “do you have any rooms for tomorrow?” For that trip, it was enough to book me and my future husband into youth hostels and pensions.
After visiting Italy again 30 years later as a school trip chaperone, I decided to learn Italian again, but for real this time. Last week, I completed a full year of Italian at City College of San Francisco. My classmates and I come from all walks of life, all ages and from all over the world. Two nights per week, we sat through two-hour long classes, learning conjugations, vocabulary, practicing dialogues, role plays and embracing the messiness and discomforts of learning anything new, let alone a language later in life.
We laughed at our mistakes, supported each other, texted each other somewhat obsessively about the homework, the final and sent each other a stream of endless but somehow educational Instagram videos in Italian. As a high school Spanish teacher, learning a new language has given me the opportunity to see the classroom from the other side of the desk. It has given me the empathy that teachers sometimes forget to have for our students.
My classmates and I decided to learn a language the way it has always been taught: together, struggling, figuring out how language works, and, to our own surprise, are now able to converse in Italian. By coming together in our little community of language learners, my classmates and I are making the world a little smaller and a little warmer. With a Perspective, I’m Sophie Abitbol.