In the world of international espionage, M sends James Bond on dangerous missions.
In my world, M sends me Italian homework.
I am beginning to suspect that Bond has the easier job.
A Night at the Opera
It began innocently enough.
I had booked two tickets to Turandot, Giacomo Puccini’s final opera, for my daughter and me. It would be my first experience of a live Italian opera, and I was looking forward to an evening of beautiful music, elaborate costumes, and a princess who had devised an unusually effective method of discouraging unwanted suitors.
Three riddles.
One wrong answer.
Off with his head.
A little excessive, perhaps, but one must admire a woman who takes her boundaries seriously.
I had already familiarised myself with the story, which was fortunate because my limited Italian vocabulary was unlikely to carry me through three acts of operatic anguish.
I knew Nessun dorma, of course. Who doesn’t? I was also looking forward to hearing the Italian language performed by professional singers, although I suspected that understanding the lyrics would require considerably more than my existing knowledge of supermarkets, railway stations, and the correct prepositions for travelling to and from them.
As it turned out, I understood very little.
But I did learn sangue.
Blood.
Because they kept singing about blood.
I also learned speranza, meaning hope, which happened to be the answer to Turandot’s first riddle.
This seemed an appropriate summary of my Italian education thus far: a great deal of hope, accompanied by the occasional desire to shed blood.
Metaphorically, of course.
Whenever the English surtitles appeared, I would read them first and then listen carefully for the corresponding Italian words. Sometimes I caught one. Occasionally two. More often, entire sentences swept past me in a glorious torrent of vowels and orchestral accompaniment.
I consoled myself with the knowledge that Puccini had not composed Turandot specifically for beginners studying Italian prepositions.
Although, given the frequency with which people threatened to execute one another, perhaps he should have.
The Woman Who Ruined Everything
The evening’s programme included a pre-show interview with Andrea Paduano, an Italian-language lecturer and coordinator of the Italian programme at Universiti Malaya. The opera was being presented in conjunction with the Week of Italian Language in the World, with support from the Embassy of Italy.
As we were queueing up to enter the theatre after the interview, I overheard Andrea speaking in Italian. I turned and saw that he was speaking with a young Chinese woman. And she replied. In effortlessly fluent Italian.
I don’t know whether she was one of his students, how long she had been studying Italian, or whether she had spent time in Italy.
What I do know is that I wanted to speak like that.
I want to be able to respond to someone in Italian without first convening an emergency committee inside my head to debate the appropriate preposition.
And that, dear reader, was where the trouble began.
Because wanting to become fluent in Italian is one thing.
Actually achieving fluency is quite another.
Especially when I’ve already committed myself to completing 900 preposition exercises.
The Preposition Wars
For the uninitiated, Italian prepositions are small, seemingly harmless words that exist for the sole purpose of torturing me.
Consider a, in, da, di, and su.
Five tiny words that are causing me a world of grief.
Apparently, one goes a Roma, but in Sicilia. One goes al supermercato but in farmacia. One comes da Milano but returns dall’ufficio.
There are rules, naturally.
There are also exceptions.
And just when one believes one has understood the rules, a perfectly innocent sentence appears and destroys that illusion.
I have completed 170 preposition exercises.
There are 730 remaining.
Seven hundred and thirty.
I went to the opera hoping to hear Nessun dorma. I came home realising that nessun riposo—no rest—was a more accurate description of my Italian education.
M: The Man Behind the Missions
My Italian tutor is a perfectly lovely man. Patient, encouraging, and apparently determined to ensure that I can correctly identify every preposition in the Italian language before either of us retires.
He has the remarkable ability to make even the most intimidating aspects of Italian grammar seem perfectly manageable.
Unfortunately, this optimism is not always shared by his student.
He explains things patiently. I nod enthusiastically. Everything makes sense.
Then I attempt the exercises on my own.
Suddenly, nothing makes sense.
I suspect he genuinely believes that, with enough practice, I will eventually master these infernal little words.
I suspect he’s right.
This is deeply inconvenient, as it leaves me with absolutely no justification for complaining.
But that hasn’t stopped me from complaining.
I should probably tell him that I genuinely enjoy our lessons.
That I appreciate his patience, his encouragement, and the way he makes learning Italian something to look forward to.
That despite my dramatic protests, I am rather proud of how far I’ve come.
But I mustn’t let him become too complacent.
After all, we still have the subjunctive to contend with.