Speaking of Italian...

I have apparently acquired a Florentine accent.

I can’t actually hear it, but at least five different people in the last month (the guy at the bus station in Modena, various people at Ca’ Penelope in Maranello, the signora in the apartment below us here in San Giuseppe Jato) have told me so, and the Tuscan journalist who was here doing an article on Libera Terra a few days ago said, (within ten minutes of meeting me, without any prompting, and I swear I hadn’t mentioned it yet) “So, you studied in Florence then?”

In a country where people habitually spend the first five minutes of any conversation working out where you grew up based on your accent, it means, in some sense, that I am officially “from” Florence.  I couldn’t be more proud.

And then, to keep me humble, there is Micciché, who goes into gales of (good-natured) laughter whenever I attempt to “speak” Sicilian, and who told me this morning that I am the official American representative of the group, since I am the only one of the three resident American students who still has a bit of an American accent.  Granted, this is not an entirely fair comparison, as Ned spent a year in high school and two years college in Bologna, taking all of his classes at the university.  In fact, the first time I talked to him on the phone, I thought he WAS Italian, despite the fact that I knew he was American.

In other news, after nearly a year of living in Italy, I am happy to report that I can finally reliably remember the difference between the following (bear in mind that the difference in pronunciation between l and gl in the middle of a word is subtle):

- table (tavolo)

- little table (tavolino)

- tablecloth (tovaglia)

- napkin (tovagliolo)

Part of the problem (aside from the way table can actually be either masculine or feminine depending on the context, as well as  all the tavo vs. tova, and the fact that napkin sounds like tablecloth but is a different gender) was that I always thought napkin ought to be la tovaglina, [the little tablecloth] which, alas, it isn’t.  But at least, given a few moments to think, I no longer ask someone to please pass me the tablecloth.

Not to worry, however, since I continue to entertain everyone with occasional lingual mishaps.  Yesterday Francesco was explaining to us the process that turns the grain the co-ops harvest into a package of pasta.  This involves a pastificio (a pasta making factory).  Wanting to make sure I had the system down right, I asked, “So, Libera Terra Mediterraneo buys the grain from the co-ops, and then sends it to the pasticceria [pastry shop] to be made into pasta?”

And on Saturday morning I asked Micciché if “these eggs [uova] were a different kind than the others we’d been working with?”.  This made him chuckle, as we were standing in a field of grapes [uva].

This field of grapes (aka vigneto, vineyard), actually:

It's Micciché's vineyard, and we spent Saturday morning (from about 6 am until noon) helping him with the "green harvest", which means pulling/pruning off all of the grapes before they're ready.  The cantine (where wine is made) can't handle all the grapes grown every year, which means that after a while they close, and won't buy any more.  However, the government will pay a certain number of farmers to pull all the grapes off anyway and leave them on the ground, if they can't be sold to the cantina.  We spent a good bit of the morning (and lunch afterwards) getting Micciché to (re)explain (for the umpteenth time) the logic of this, since it doesn't seem to be about the health of the vineyard, although that might be a factor.  And still don't really understand.  Will get back to you if we figure it out, although Micciché's conclusion seems to be that it's just una politica sbagliata (which loosely translates as dumb politics).  But, hey, if the government is willing to pay him for it, he is willing to pull off all the grapes.

While we're at it, here's the view from Micciché's vineyard:

And, lastly, Ned, Micciché and Joel in the vineyard: