Polyglot Dreams

Personal Statement

I was born and raised in Italy and moved to the Seattle area in 1999 for work. I have always loved learning languages, and in this essay I talk about my personal journey in the pursuit of linguistic proficiency and cultural understanding.

Polyglot Dreams

I clearly remember sitting in front of the black and white TV in the living room, following with eager attention as the numbers appeared on the screen and were called out… in Spanish. I don’t remember how I discovered that not everybody in the world speaks Italian, but at age 7 I was already fascinated by the idea that people could speak other languages.  Languages were like a secret code, made up of strange symbols and sounds that only certain people understand. I desperately wanted to crack that code and become part of the magic that allows people and other living things to share and communicate. I never stopped wanting to learn.

My first success as an unconventional code-breaker was early in my life: I was a shy girl, praised for being quiet and sitting, unnoticed, in a room full of adults. I listened attentively to them talk, and I secretly absorbed the “adult-things” they said, when they forgot I was there or thought I would not understand.

But my first study of an actual foreign language came in middle school, when I took English. The challenge of learning was mitigated by the excitement I would feel every time I could put together a few sentences in my broken English. I dreamed of becoming bilingual.  I decided languages would be my academic focus for the future.

The summer of 8th grade, I became the family rebel. Like every summer, my family was visiting my great aunts at their country house in a small village in the plains of the Emilia Romagna region. We were all sitting at the large kitchen table having lunch – my parents, my brother, my grandparents and my 3 great aunts – when I proudly announced I would go on to study languages at a specialized high school. I did not think much of the awkward silence around the table when I said that. After lunch, as I was helping the women clear the table, I overheard my grandma telling my great aunts that she was worried I would not make it at that school. I loved my grandma and my great aunts very deeply, and hearing them express reservations about my abilities broke my heart. But it was hardly surprising: let’s just say expectations for a woman in the Italian society of the time were pretty different from what I envisioned for myself. Women were supposed to cook, run the household, look after the children and their husband. If they really wanted a career, they could go to a 4-year training school to become an elementary school teacher. I spoke about it with my mom, who, to her credit, was very much onboard with me pursuing my dreams. So, instead of acquiescing, I became determined to prove I could do it.

And, for the rest of my life, I did just that. I put value in academic success, flourished at school, and became more confident as an independent woman, ready to take on the male-dominated world of 1980s Italy. I turned my back on all the activities expected of a good housewife – I refused to cook, never got near a sewing machine or a needle, did the minimum of house chores and only if my brother was also going to share in them.

My knowledge of languages expanded significantly in high school, where I studied English, French and German. I even enjoyed my 2 years of compulsory Latin – a dead language, but crucially important to understanding grammar basics and the building blocks of all Indo-European languages. I started going on short trips to other countries–Austria, Wales, France – testing and improving my fluency.

At 15, I went to the US for the first time. I lived with friends of my dad for 4 months. No Italian spoken there. I experienced it as a true baptism by fire, a crash course in survival and endurance. At first it was terrifying – I felt completely lost. But the brain of a teenager is malleable, and soon I could put meanings to sounds, string longer and longer sentences together and make others understand me. I started cracking the secret code of the English language, my first real success in a lifelong endeavor.

I developed a close friendship with one of the daughters, just a year older than me. I considered myself a rebel at home in Italy, but compared to her, I was a mere sheep. She was wild and confident; I admired her self-assurance and willingness to try new things. When I went back home, I was a changed person: more assertive, outgoing, clearer on who I was and who I wanted to be. And I could think and dream in English; I was fluent enough that, in the Italy of that time, I could pass for a foreigner — a useful skill for a cunning teenager who wanted to hear what the boys had to say about her…

In the early 2000s I moved to Ireland for a new job – software translator for Microsoft. There I met my future husband, learned Swedish – his mother tongue – and had my first child.  When we moved with our budding family of 3 to Seattle, I became the sole bread winner. I was not quite done proving to my paternal family that I could be as successful as any man, so I continued in my career, while my husband stayed at home with our 2 daughters.

Now, in my early retirement, I can finally rest. I have achieved my polyglot dreams: I can express myself in several languages, I am fully bilingual, and I live in a multi-cultural household with trilingual daughters. And I can finally go to sewing class and learn how to use a sewing machine.