The English Student

     Here in Italy I have, through no particular effort on my part but merely thanks to my upbringing, a highly sought after and marketable skill. I speak English as a first language. That's why, after much deliberation, I recently joined the rank and file of so many other English speaking expatriates before me and became an English tutor.

      To be honest, I had been resisting this for quite some time due to my own feelings of inadequacy in being able to articulately explain the subtlety and nuances of English grammar, having spent only several brief months of my 18 year academic career actually studying it. Compare this to the average Italian curriculum, which includes grammar consistently up through middle school, and I couldn't help but to imagine the daily humiliation of student after student asking me to explain the past perfect, the present continuous, the gerund, etc. In the end the need for an income eventually outweighed my insecurities and caused me to bite the proverbial bullet. So now, with a little over a month of tutoring under my belt, as well as several years of Italian life to accompany it, I would like to share a few of my thoughts, observations, and experiences with regards to our language.

1. First of all, in non-English speaking countries there is a constant differentiation between British English and American English. This has, I believe, led to a degree of confusion amongst some and in my having to explain on more than several occasions that it is the SAME LANGUAGE with the same basic grammar and sentence structure. Only the accent is different. When given the opportunity I make sure to set people straight, but this distinction is perpetuated even in language schools where they often offer classes in both Inglese and Inglese Americano. The first time I saw this I was perplexed. I mean does someone really need an entirely different course in order to learn that in England they say “underground” instead of “subway” and “rucksack” instead of “backpack”? I personally think not. And even if someone has a preference for one accent over another, whether their teacher speaks with an English accent or an American accent, the chances are that they will regardless be speaking with an Italian accent. That being said, after several years of a futile crusade, I have lost my drive to correct people when they say that I speak Americano instead of Inglese. The one thing in which I hold my ground is that I refuse to speak with an English accent just because that's what someone is already used to hearing. And yes, I have gotten that request.

2. Whether you speak with an English accent, American accent, or Italian accent, spelling is something to be tackled. So all you English speakers out there, have you ever stopped to realize that the Spelling Bee is a phenomenon of the English language?... Well, now that you have, do you know why?... Here's why. Because languages like Italian have easily followed rules regarding spelling and its relationship to pronunciation whereas English is basically a free for all. When I took an intensive Italian class a few years ago and happened to ask how a certain word was written (the verb “to spell” doesn't exist) I got a very strange look from the teacher who simply repeated the word for me, but a little more slowly. That's because in Italian, even if you've never heard a particular word before, you should still know how to spell it based on the unchanging rules of pronunciation. This is so very very not so in English where words may be spelled differently but pronounced the same (ex. bare and bear), spelled the same but pronounced differently (ex. wind and wind), and possibly worst of all, straight out written in two different ways depending on your personal preference (ex. color and colour, or theater and theatre). Furthermore, in what other language can a single configuration of letters be pronounced in SIX different ways (ex. o-u-g-h: through, thought, though, cough, rough, bough)? Now, try telling a student who is used to a language with rules that that's just the way it is and that they will simply have to memorize spelling and pronunciation based on context. I assure you that, after their laughter has subsided and they realize that you're serious, they will look at you as if you're asking them to bend a spoon with the power of their mind. As my sister-in-law says, “You have 26 letters in the alphabet. For Christ's sake, use them!”

3. Then there's English as a spoken language, complete with its slang and distortion of official grammatical rules. This means that some things which are grammatically correct sound weird while other things that are grammatically wrong sound good. This is a dilemma for a language tutor. I have a student that wants to speak English like a native. That means that when she says “I have not an apple”, even though I can't tell her it's wrong, I still have to correct her because it just sounds weird. Or when I ask her how she is doing, if she says that she is “well”, I feel obliged to taint her grammar with the more commonly heard “good”. And let's not even get started on the double negative and the fact that if you mean it in one way it's grammatically sound whereas if you mean it in the other way it's slang for exactly the opposite (ex. “I don't want to do nothing”). I deal with these things as they come up and just have to hope that I'm not confusing her too thoroughly, though, despite whatever confusion it may cause, I will most certainly draw the line at “I would have went...”. People who say that should be shot.

4. Lastly, despite the fact that, when all is said and done, English grammar is actually far simpler than Italian grammar, students always manage to find those little subtleties that are just so hard to explain. What's the difference between “I have not” and “I did not”? When should one use “I have seen” as opposed to “I saw”? These questions lead to all sorts of discussions regarding the past perfect, the present perfect, the simple past, etc. that I feel only moderately qualified to answer. But in an attempt to not use “that's just the way it is” as my answer for everything, I'm now making a private effort to learn how to speak my own language.

      In closing I would like to take this moment to call to all of our attentions just how lucky we are to speak English. We can travel to almost any point on the globe and be more or less understood. For those of us that are native speakers, if/when we move to non-English speaking countries, we instantly have a priceless gift that others envy, going so far as to even pay us just to sit around and chat with them. Not too shabby a lifestyle if you think about it.