Perhaps it's a way of avoiding study for my impending German exam (30th. September) but Anne and I are planning a holiday for the first week in October. Rome is our dream destination.
We went for an Italian meal on our wedding anniversary and I found myself wanting to study the language. I'm very suggestible that way, almost to the point where I think I may have a mild form of mental illness. Well at least an aberration. Every year at this time I get strange impulses to study foreign languages. Inevitably, I usually end up dabbling after signing up for Open University courses. There's usually a strong start followed by a limp across the finishing line 11 months later. So far I've completed the basic units for French, Spanish and (soon) German. Each supplies enough vocabulary and practice to hold a basic conversation and the content and presentation are uniformly excellent. Armed with these linguistic weapons I should at least be able to talk about the weather, discuss illnesses and injuries and give basic directions to strangers.
I'm always surprised when tourists visit Scotland in the Summer months. July and August are always months that test the saturation point of the peat fields and fill our rivers to the brim. Every day I make my way to work across George Square in the centre of the city feeling guilty as I see tour coaches discharge stunned looking Spaniards, Italians, Germans and French mesdames and messieurs into the torrents of Summer.
There was one high point when the pipe band championships were being held in town on their customary waterlogged date near the start of August. Pipers abounded in the city centre emitting weird high- pitched noises and waterspouts from their chanters and pibrochs. Even liberal-minded Continentals must have been slightly shocked at first glance. Do these strange, bearded, cross-dressing men always make love to calimari so publicly ?
Anyway,I've come to both dread and relish the challenge of being asked for directions by visitors to the city. I tell myself that, "This time I'll get it right!".
Invariably I start quite well but if the stranger becomes heartened by encountering a Brit who speaks their language ( no matter how badly) and throws more complex constructions into the mix, then I'm lost. Even if I get the gist of what they're saying my meagre ration of words never seems adequate for a reply. My strategy then becomes a frenzy of hand gestures, fractured French, shredded Spanish or garbled German intermixed with English words to fill the (many) gaps; a wattle and daub approach to communication. As if in a recurring nightmare I suddenly realise that my Open University units are balanced on top of a pile of linguistic scraps. German exclamations culled from "Commando" comics protrude from a litter of Spanish dialogue discarded by the Mexican bandits in the "Magnificent Seven".Snippets from the "Pink Panther" films occasionally skitter into the mix when my supply of French is exhausted and Franglais is my only alternative.
I can't lay claim to being the only polyglot (failed) who tackles communication this way.
If you've ever read Umberto Eco's "The name of the Rose" you may remember a character called Salvatore (played by Ron Perlman in the film version of the book). His approach is disturbingly similar, with segments of Italian, Latin and Greek added to my own basic stock of Northern European tongues. I'm sure that there must be other sufferers out there.
If this condition ever gains medical recognition I want it to be called"Salvatore syndrome".
With medical conditions it's always best to make early claims on any new phenomenon.
Many years ago, when I was studying Medicine (not very well) my class had a lecture on Korsakoff's psychosis, a set of debilitating symptoms caused by alcoholism. Korsakoff was a Polish physician who practised medicine in Austria. His classic case, used to define the disorder named after him, was based on the example of a Scottish music teacher who had been living in Vienna for many years. This teacher drank huge amounts of alcohol, 2 or 3 bottles of schnapps per day .He eventually developed memory loss, nerve damage and a coping mechanism of "confabulation". This allowed him to try to cover the gaps in his memory by making up stories.
One of my fellow students summed up the injustice of medical nomenclature: "Isn't that just typical? A Scotsman does all the hard work and some bloody foreigner takes all the credit!"
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