All posts by asaluti

“A Dialect with an Army and a Navy”

Interview

Interview with Suzanne Flynn, Professor of Foreign Languages and Linguistics, MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy

On the eighth floor of MIT’s Stata Center—structurally beautiful but difficult to navigate—sits the university’s department of linguistics. This is one of MIT’s most famous and prolific departments; its professors and researchers study a variety of different topics related to language. The eighth floor was fascinating: when I stepped off the elevator, an assistant asked me if I was looking for “the room” wherein, apparently, there was a study on native Portuguese speakers taking place.

Down the hall from “the room” is Professor Suzanne Flynn’s office. Her research focuses on bilingualism and second language acquisition in children and adults. I sat down with her on a sunny April afternoon to talk about bilingualism, language acquisition, language education, and the political factors that influence them.

As we talked about our common experiences with multilingualism and our shared interest in the political factors that influence language, it became clear that Flynn is deeply excited by these topics and is very passionate about her research into it. She told me, “I’ve always been driven by bilingualism and trying to understand how it is that someone has multiple languages in their head.” Indeed, she has studied bilingualism in depth: how it works, how we become bilingual (i.e. what factors in the school, home, or culture lead to bilingualism), and how it affects the process of learning more languages.

Flynn did not start as an academic. She came to the topics of bilingualism and language acquisition by teaching in a bilingual Spanish-English program in Puerto Rico and later, in the Boston public school system. After this teaching experience, she went on to get her masters in linguistics at Cornell, with a focus on second-language acquisition. Since then, the scope of her research has expanded and changed, just as the theory of linguistics itself has.

Beyond bilingual Spanish and English speakers in the United States, Flynn has studied people who speak somewhat rare languages, like Kazakh. She has worked with people who speak at different levels (i.e. native speakers, second language learners, and beginners). She has studied people who have learned their second or third language in an assortment of different contexts—for example simultaneous Spanish-English bilinguals in the United States, native Chinese speakers learning English in the United States, and Kazakh speakers learning Russian in school.

Flynn also elaborated on the political factors that drive language education—like policy, ideology, and national identity. Obviously, language acquisition does not happen in a vacuum—who learns what language where is deeply influenced by political factors. Flynn is clearly well versed in these factors and how they affect the way in which we talk about language. She quotes the sociolinguists’ adage that “a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.” That is to say, languages have more political clout than dialects. Flynn gave the example of China—where the country’s languages are called dialects even if they are structurally very different, because it is important that the country be politically unified rather than divided by different languages. It is clear that the way that we talk about language, and even the way that we learn and understand it, is driven by political factors. Flynn is conscious of these factors, especially the way in which they influence schools and language education. She has worked extensively with Spanish-English bilingual schools in the United States and understands how policy and American national identity have influenced these.

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Professor Suzanne Flynn (SF): I started out as a bilingual teacher—Spanish-English—in Puerto Rico. I came to Boston and taught at Boston High School in the bilingual system; I taught English and Social Studies to Spanish speakers. I’ve always been driven by bilingualism and trying to understand how it is that someone has multiple languages in their head. I went to graduate school at Cornell and got a PhD in linguistics—my area of study was adult second language acquisition. I was trying to understand if there is a critical period for language acquisition—if beyond age twelve you aren’t really able to learn a new language.

At that time, the theory of linguistics was changing a lot. We were moving from a descriptive approach to language another that is represented by Chomsky, here [at MIT]—a more genitive approach that talks about language faculties and the uniqueness of language. I used that as the basis of my research in second language acquisition with adults. I also used complex syntax in very controlled studies—looking at comprehension and production in multiple languages.

The original languages that I looked at were controlled for level of proficiency were Spanish, Japanese, and Chinese. We were looking at adults learning English as a second language—the whole range, from beginners to advanced speakers. That has expanded, so now the language groups that I’ve looked at have expanded. And I’ve also moved on to look at children too, to compare children who were simultaneous bilinguals to children who were learning English as a second language seeing if, beyond the age of ten or twelve, they looked like adult speakers. What you find is that their patterns of development, of syntax, are the same—controlling for the first language.

Now I’m looking at third language acquisition. So we started out by looking at Kazakh speakers who learned Russian, who learned English… Some of them were simultaneous learners of Kazakh and Russian, we controlled for that. Basically, we were looking at Kazakh speakers in Kazakhstan who had learned Kazakh in the home. At that time—though it’s changed now—they learned Russian in the schools, because they were only taught in Russian. Then they learned English. Then we also looked at—because things had changed over time—children who were simultaneous Kazakh and Russian learning English as well, so who were learning English as a second language. So, though there are some different patterns, the general patterns of development are the same.

Now, what we’re trying to tease apart is interference from the first language. We’re trying to see what role other languages play in subsequent acquisition when you’re doing it sequentially. We have found that they can only help you. There is a traditional belief that they interfere, but they really don’t.

Alessandra Saluti (SF): So if I speak English and I’m trying to learn a second language, English can only help me?

SF: Yes, depending on the language’s properties. So we looked at Kazakh, which is an SOV language (subject object verb). Japanese, for example, is also a subject object verb language. If you compare Japanese speakers to Spanish speakers learning English, they both eventually acquire the language, but Spanish [is an] SVO (subject verb object), like Italian and French. And English [is an SVO language] too—though it used to be SOV because of its Germanic roots. And German used to be more SOV, but English switched—because it’s both a Germanic and a Romance language. English changed before Shakespeare. At that time people were trying to make English more like Latin, so you could have double negatives and triple negatives. Even though some Romance languages allow double negatives, they were trying to make English change. And [it also] became more of a written language, and literacy rates were increasing—these things helped.

So, anyway, if you look at Japanese speakers learning English, their patterns of development for the particular kinds of things I was looking at, look a lot like young children learning English.

But if you look at Spanish speakers learning English, controlling for the same properties, it looks like that they’ve been given sort of a boost. This is controlling for levels of proficiency, knowledge of the lexicon and the stimulus sentences, so there is no way that you can explain the differences in patterns other than by the differences in the properties of the language.

So when Kazakh speakers (which is an SOV language) learn Russian (which is an SVO language) their patterns of acquisition look like those of Japanese speakers learning English. But then when you look at Kazakh and Russian speakers learning English as a third language, their patterns of acquisition look like, say, Spanish speakers learning English. Some of the properties that they have represented in their brain with respect to Russian enhance their acquisition of English. This shows that what you know [in terms of language] you can use in subsequent acquisitions and your first language does not drive everything.
AS: Even if you’re switching from an SVO language to an SOV language?
SF: If you’re switching from an SOV to an SVO you’re going to have to establish most of these “branching” properties anew, like a young child.

AS: What about learning a language in school versus the home? This is the case for a lot of Spanish-speaking kids in the United States. The level of Spanish that they speak at home sometimes surpasses the level of Spanish they learn in school—unless they are enrolled in a bilingual program. So, let’s say they are fluent in the home, but at school they are taught English and outside of the home they speak English. What is the effect of that?

SF: We are actually just starting a project on that. People tend to treat them as a homogenous group, and they’re not—it all depends on how much of their first language they got in the home, when they switched, etc. What we are finding is that the lexicons differ. This is true for Spanish-speaking children in the U.S, Chinese-speaking children in the U.S… Turkish speakers in Germany… it all really depends on how much language exposure they got. But what they find with bilinguals in general, whether it’s heritage learners or not, the difference is in the lexicon. Each individual is not exposed to the exact same environments so that they know the same items in each language. So when you talk about bilingual deficits—it’s not a deficit, it’s that people learn different registers. That’s also true of dialect speakers in the U.S. So it’s a lot of things… it’s lexicon, it’s registers, but it’s not the basic language structures.

AS: Are dialects considered to be different languages?

SF: Well, Chomsky makes the claim that there is really only one human language, and that everything exists on a continuum. So he would say that one’s ability to speak another dialect is basically the same thing that underlies ones ability to speak different languages. It’s just that some dialects are closer to the home language than others.

So, for example, what they call dialects in China are really separate languages. In other places what they call language differences are really just dialect differences. So it’s a political construct: “a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.” China calls them dialects because they’re united more by a common system of writing, but many of them are structurally very different.

AS: And that’s political too. That’s one thing I’m interested in: for example how the education reforms of the Third Republic affected the dialects in France… the decrease of the dialects in France. Versus in Italy, the education reform [was not so strict]

SF: It’s very interesting to look at the history of these things. It’s the same in Spain. There are all these different languages: Catalan is different from Galician. But all of this is politically motivated. For example, the U.S. was very much a multilingual nation up until the late 1800s, and then with the “new” immigrants coming in—Italians, Irish, Greeks, all these different groups, coupled with Chinese speakers, posed a “threat.” Also, during WWI and WWII, it became somewhat un-American to speak these languages. But prior to this time, there were public schools and religious schools that were supported using public funds, where the language of instruction was not necessarily English.

AS: I also want to talk about the history of bilingual education in schools and why it’s underfunded in the United States. How much of that is political?

SF: Actually, the U.S. in some sense is more of a model these days for other countries. I used to think it was the other way around. But it’s only true the other way around with historical distinct language groups, like the Sami in Norway. But other countries are now looking to the U.S. to try to understand their waves of new immigrants.

So in the U.S. there was a lot of public funding up until the turn of the century, and a lot of religious schools. After WWII, all of that pretty much went underground. But then with the Cuban Missile Crisis in the 1960s, we had Spanish speakers coming to Florida. They were very wealthy for the most part. They wanted to maintain bilingualism, so in Coral Gables, Florida, the public school set up this two-way immersion language program. Spanish speakers were learning English, English speakers were learning Spanish. This program was a great success, and other schools wanted to replicate it.

At this time, the Civil Rights Act was passed, and there was a case where a group of parents in Chinatown in San Francisco sued the U.S. government because their children were being denied educational services. They successfully won the suit. So after that, in all school districts in the U.S. you had to—if there were more than X number of students in a language—provide services. But that meant that, since it was mandated by the federal government, that they had to take care of everybody’s needs. So the Coral Gables program became eviscerated.

Recently, there was an act in California, Colorado, and Massachusetts that said that you could only stay in a bilingual program for two years. It’s horrible because two years is not enough. Massachusetts has tried to get around a lot of that—what they have now are a lot of independent programs within the public school systems. But there is a lot of battle in Cambridge about these programs because they feel that it is not serving everyone—they feel that it’s only serving those who are on the other end of the SES scale.

AS: It’s interesting how the socioeconomic factor plays into it. Do you think that in towns where there is generally a higher level of income, there are more bilingual programs?

SF: The school systems run on the taxes of the town, so in towns that have more resources, they will be more likely to have these kinds of programs. There are a lot of these Saturday or Sunday schools where people from different immigrant communities can come to maintain their first language or the language of their parents—there is one for the Polish community here in Boston for example.

What I am seeing now, with these bilingual programs, is that even the second generation, a lot of the students want to reclaim their language. This is also because being multilingual is now considered to be more valuable. We have the heritage learners program here [at MIT] for Spanish, for Chinese, they’re trying to start one for Korean, there’s one for Arabic, Russian is being started up again. Students want to learn those languages again. Students want to get beyond what they had as a home language—because there’s only so much you can do in the home. […]

Literacy helps a lot—parents always ask me how they can help maintain their children’s language skills. I always tell them to read to their kids at night in the home language. That makes a very big difference because if you can become literate, you can self-teach in some sense.

AS: If you only become literate in your 20s, let’s say, is there a strong difference between you and people who became literate earlier on?

SF: To learn to write in any language—especially if you’re using the same kind of alphabet—helps. But you can also take a child who has been literate in English their whole lives…literacy doesn’t mean they can write well, because they’re being reinforced for things other than writing when they were growing up. That’s why MIT is constantly upping the ante in terms of writing requirements! […]

Learning the conventions of writing in any language, there are ranges for anyone—native speaker or not. Controlling of writing has to with controlling of register, of conventions. This is true for any language.

AS: Is there a big difference if you’re learning a new alphabet?

SF: There’s lots of variation in skills, but the earlier the better for learning a new alphabet. It still takes a child up to 12 years to learn the phrenology and everything associated with their first language. Adults want to do it within one year—they want to sound fluent. Your accent is not an indication of your fluency, but in terms of accents, the earlier the better… but people can still get rid of accents.

AS: Is this whole age cutoff thing just a myth?

SF: There’s nothing in the brain that happens around age 12. People often learn new languages as adults. If you consider the fact that there really is only one computational process in the brain that allows for human language [like Chomsky says], a child is born being able to learn any language. So if you take some piece of that or believe that, which I happen to, it’s not that big a deal to learn a new language.

 

 

 

 

 

Your Fear of Millennials is Showing

Letter to the editor

Re: “Study Abroad’s Seven Deadly Sins” (The New York Times, April 8 2016)

To the editor:

I opened the article titled The Seven Deadly Sins of Study Abroad with interest, hoping to find helpful tips for students preparing to move abroad. These students are like me—last year I lived and studied in Aix-en-Provence, France and had a wonderful and rich experience. As such, I was disappointed by the article’s misguided “advice” aimed at American students living, or considering living, abroad.

The audience that the author, Peter Coclanis, is addressing is a vague conglomerate of students “who go into a program without much forethought, focus or purpose.” It is unclear exactly what he means by this, or what amount of forethought and focus he deems appropriate in 20 year-olds, but there are more salient details of the article I would like to unpack.

First of all, the author blames students for enrolling in English language courses because they don’t have the language skills to “direct enroll” in courses at local institutions. This this is a structural issue for which students should not be faulted. If this is to change, then language requirements pre-enrollment need to be stricter and more classes need to be offered abroad in order to cater to a wider set of language levels.

The author also criticizes the lifestyle choices of young people studying abroad. He accuses them of drinking too much, as if study abroad students are the only ones who do this, and suggests that students having sexual relationships abroad are consumed only with sex—staying in bed all day every day, only to take a break to “order Domino’s.” This commentary is comically misguided and out of touch. In fact, it is possible to have a sex life, a social life and an academic life all at once—abroad or not. The author also makes a bizarre and upsetting comment about Amanda Knox’s “misadventures” in Italy, as if her case should be a warning to women in sexual relationships abroad.

While the author may have written this article with good intentions, he places excessive blame on students and is so comically out of touch that the article seems like a parody of itself.

The author having a great (and culturally appropriate time!) in France
The author having a great (and culturally appropriate!) time in France

As a (recent) study abroad alum, I am calling Professor Coclanis out on his misguided commentary on American students abroad. Yes, they may take classes in English. Yes, they may drink and have sex. But these activities are not sins, and they do not in any way inhibit a successful, rich, and productive study abroad experience.

Ida: The Jewish Nun

Film review

From the beginning of Ida, religion is central to the film’s development: the first scenes are mostly close-ups on various religious symbols in the convent, like crosses, a statue of Jesus, or the nuns’ habits. The audience understands within the first five minutes of the film that religion has been the main factor in shaping the life of Anna, the protagonist. She is a novice nun who was abandoned at the convent as an infant, and is about to take her vows. The viewer discovers quickly that Anna is in fact a Jewish girl named Ida and, alongside her, we learn that almost her entire family was killed during the Second World War. Her only living relative is her aunt Wanda, from whom she learns her family’s tragic history. Wanda appears to be a direct rejection of the vows of piety, chastity and poverty Ida is preparing to take: she is a heavy drinker, a chain smoker, and has frequent sexual encounters with strangers. This tension proves central to Ida’s development: there are two paths that she can take: she can go back to the convent and take her vows or she can stay with her aunt and live a life filled with earthly pleasures and disappointments. She learns throughout the film what life outside the convent may entail: love (which she learns through her romantic and sexual interaction with Lis, a man that she and Wanda meet on the road), loss (through her family history and the death of her aunt), tragedy, and maybe even redemption.

The tension between her two options is made clear throughout the film, as the main focus is placed on Wanda and Ida. The rest of the characters have very few lines and don’t make frequent or lengthy appearances; Wanda and Ida spend the majority of the film in proximity to each other. In these scenes, the two protagonists are portrayed as diametrically opposed. Ida is completely innocent and does not know about life outside of the convent; she has been protected her whole life from reality. Her innocence may slowly fade throughout the film, but she does not lose her faith. Wanda, on the other hand, has seen so much tragedy and violence that she has lost all faith, though it is clear that she used to be a “true believer” in the communist cause. In fact, the reason she was not killed during the war like the rest of her family is because she was part of the anti-Nazi resistance. In order to cope with her guilt and loss of faith, she numbs herself constantly with alcohol and sex to help distance herself from her terrible past and grim reality. Though Wanda may gain some degree of hope—and even faith—from her time with Ida, her suicide toward the end of the movie makes it clear that she could not survive her grief.

This contrast between the two protagonists is emphasized during a scene in which Ida states that she wants to go find where her family is buried. At this point Wanda asks Ida, “what if you go there and discover there is no God?” She knows that this experience will be disturbing and may shake Ida’s belief system—her religion and her faith, which are the basis of her entire identity. Then, Wanda smiles and says, in an almost patronizing tone, “I know, God is everywhere”. Here, the viewer understands that believing in God, and keeping her faith, will be a way for Ida to be able to cope with learning about her family’s past.

However, the director, Paweł Pawlikowski, did not make this film to convey any particular religious message or even to represent religion in a favorable way. It is made clear that religion is often used as an excuse for silence or as a way to cover up heinous crimes: we learn that the priest who lived in the same town (Piaska) as Ida’s parents during the war claims to not know anything about them. We also see learn that the Skibas—the family who hid then killed Ida and Wanda’s family during the war—are deeply Christian. When Ida is in their home discovering the truth about her family, she stands in a doorway, where there is a large cross the wall above her head, and when Ida first arrives at the house, she is asked to bless the family’s crying baby. These two instances make clear the social privileges that Ida has because she is a nun. Moreover, she was not killed as an infant because she was able to pass for a gentile. As such, religion is represented in a very complicated and nuanced way, which allows the viewer to see some of the elements that are not given much attention or detail in the movie, like politics.

Religion is used as a conduit for the viewer to be able to understand the multiple political elements that complicate the plot and movie background, since the political context is not made entirely clear: the war is only referred to briefly in the movie, and even then there are only allusions to things that happened to Ida’s family during that time. The audience understands the historical context through references to religion and/or religious identity—chosen or inherited, which allows the filmmakers to not clarify in depth the movie’s historical or political context.

The audience also understands how deeply Roman Catholicism is intertwined with Polish national identity, as it is more frequently talked about than communism. In fact, there are only two obvious references to politics and the state: one, when Wanda is at work as a judge and two, at her funeral—where a government official reads an emotionless eulogy about “Comrade Wanda’s” great contributions to “making a new Poland.” These scenes both serve to help us understand the fundamental tragedy of Wanda’s life: she tells Ida that she had no idea what she had been fighting for during the war. It is clear that while Wanda once had faith in this system, she has lost it entirely. It is also crucial to explore why the film chooses to highlight religion, given the fact that it is based in Poland during the country’s communist era. Though Polish communism was inherently anti-religion, many of the film’s characters are deeply Catholic. This demonstrates that religion serves as a tool to create and maintain individual identity in a politically totalitarian country, just as faith provides Ida with a reprieve from the harrowing reality that she faces upon learning the truth about her family.

Ironically, it doesn’t appear as though the filmmakers are making any overall comment on religion or the role of religion in Ida’s life. It is simply provides a perspective to better understand her history and her life. This is indicative of the film itself, which uses cinematic simplicity to convey deeply complex themes and realities.

Racism all’Italiana

Op-Ed

Italy has produced some of the most celebrated movies in the Western world, featuring directors and actors like Federico Fellini, Vittorio de Sica, Sophia Loren, and Marcello Mastroianni—household names for many cinema lovers. From the irreverent movies like La Dolce Vita and Marriage Italian Style to the tearjerkers like Cinema Paradiso and Life is Beautiful to the social justice-oriented films like Rome, Open City and Bicycle Thieves, Italian cinema has brought to light many facets of the country’s culture.

Italian identity has undoubtedly shaped and been shaped by its cinema, yet there are still groups that are ignored, fetishized, and even mocked by the country’s widely-renowned movies. The groups that are most misrepresented by Italian cinema include immigrants, Italians of color, and southern Italians. The way that we represent our society through cinema, one of Italy’s most beloved cultural activities, provides excellent insight into the divisions and tensions that exist in the country. Because Italian cinema is key to understanding the country’s culture, there must be a more concerted effort on the part of cinema makers to represent the society more accurately.

The lack of complex representation in Italian cinema is especially frustrating because it is clear that Italian filmmakers do not lack insight or nuance. In fact, marginalized groups have been accurately represented and valorized by the country’s cinema. Most notably, some of Italy’s most famous and best-loved Italian films—the Neorealist movies of the 1960s and 1970s—largely focus on the issues faced by working class people in Italy. These films help bring to light the differing levels of opportunity that social and economic status afford people in Italy. However, it is important to examine where race fits into this picture.

Though it is not apparent from Italy’s most popular films, there have been black actors in the country’s movies since the inception of filmmaking. Fred Kuwornu, a black Italian director and activist, has brought this issue to light with his 2016 documentary Blaxploitalian: 100 Anni di Afrostorie nel Cinema Italiano (100 Years of Blackness in Italian Cinema). This film discusses the presence of Italian actors of African descent and black foreign actors in Italian movies in order to highlight the historic and continued presence of black actors in this cinema.

With his films—which also include Inside Buffalo and 18 IUS Soli— Kuwornu has helped to map out a more realistic vision of Italian society today, a vision that cannot be gathered from most of the country’s media. Kuwornu forces his audience to ask themselves whose voices have been privileged in Italian media.

Unfortunately, even if many actors of color are born and raised in Italy, they are usually still cast in the roles of immigrants and are sometimes forced to fake accents that are not their own. It is clear that actors of color have been given a narrow space in Italian media: they are cast in roles of people that are represented as being outside of the country’s cultural identity.

These flawed representations prove that Italian cinema makers have been unable to depict a nuanced and critical vision of Italy. They have not been able to represent the ever-changing demographic landscape of the Peninsula. In fact, to be black and Italian, or to be Asian and Italian, or to be Hispanic and Italian, is becoming more and more common: around 14% of Italians were born to immigrant parents. Italy does not have as far-reaching or complex a colonial history as France or England, so it is a less attractive country for French and English-speaking African immigrants. However, Italy’s colonial history does impact the country’s demographics. In fact, Eritreans and Somalis have been migrating to Italy since at least the 1970s. Yet, when you turn on the TV or go to the movies in Italy, it is highly unlikely that you will see a newscaster or actor of color. It is rare to hear an accent that falls outside of the acceptable “native” and “well-educated” Italian—it is even uncommon to hear a strong southern Italian accent on TV.

Until we see more Italian cinema makers like Kuwornu, who highlight the voices and experiences of marginalized groups in Italy, we will only see a small portion of Italian society portrayed in its media. Cinema makers must seek to represent all facets of Italian society if Italy is to maintain its status and relevance in worldwide cinema.

Bunad

Feature article

May 17th is Syttende Mai, or Constitution Day, in Norway. It’s the country’s biggest national holiday, a time when Norwegians celebrate their country and heritage. It’s the best day of the year! my friend Daniel had written to me when I confirmed that I would visit him after my final exams. Everyone will be all dressed up, so make sure to wear something nice. I stuffed a black dress, a pair of tights, and ballet flats in my backpack, hoping that that would suffice. Mostly, I was excited to visit my childhood friend, whom I hadn’t seen in quite a few years. I booked my tickets for May 16th to 18th—a short trip, but at least I would get to experience some true Norwegian national pride.

Daniel and I have been friends for most of our lives; we grew up in Italy together and both had Italian dads and foreign, English-speaking moms—his was Norwegian-American, mine was just American. Both of our mothers found comfort in speaking English to each other—a rare experience in a relatively small, not very tourist-centered Italian town. As kids, Daniel and I would always speak Italian with each other, but this changed when he moved to Norway in 10th grade. Now, we speak exclusively in English. During the trip, the only time I heard Daniel speak Italian was when he was talking to his sister’s boyfriend, who had just moved to Oslo from Tuscany and was still having a hard time mastering English and Norwegian.

I spent my first night in Oslo on the sofa in Daniel’s apartment—shocked to see the sun rising at 3 a.m. I put a pillow over my face to block out the light: I knew I would need plenty of rest to prepare for the next day’s celebrations. Indeed, we woke up at 7 a.m. to take the metro to Daniel’s mother’s house and pick up his traditional outfit. We skipped breakfast—he told me that after seeing his mother, we would be going to a champagne brunch at his friend’s house. This, he confirmed, is how all good Norwegians start their celebration of the best day of the year.

We took the metro to his mother’s neighborhood. On the train, there were people dressed in elegantly tailored dresses, suits, and overcoats—looking poised and chic. I was starting to feel underprepared for the day. I felt even more underdressed when I noticed that the majority of people on the train were dressed in colorful outfits with embroidered vests and puffy white shirts. The men wore cropped jackets, short pants and knee-length wool socks, while the women wore petticoats and beautiful, intricate dresses. Daniel explained that they were all wearing the bunad—the traditional outfit that he would be putting on at his mother’s house. His Norwegian grandparents had recently bought him a bunad and this would be the first Syttende Mai he would be celebrating wearing one. Since most of people on the metro were older than us, I asked Daniel if young people wore these outfits as well. He answered that those who didn’t really care about being patriotic or those who didn’t own a bunad didn’t wear one. I began to understand then how much he cared about being a patriotic Norwegian and how much he cared about showing off his traditional outfit.

After we got off the metro, Daniel and I walked up a hill to his mother’s house. Along the way, he pointed out the preschool where he worked, the streets he turned on to get to his friend’s houses, and various other neighborhood landmarks. I was having trouble paying attention to what he was saying, because the neighborhood and the general atmosphere made me feel like I was in a surreal fairytale setting; I half expected one of those trolls that you find in Norwegian tourist shops to pop out of nowhere. The sky was impossibly blue, the clouds were far too fluffy, and the houses, with their sloped roofs and dark wood paneling, all looked like ski lodges.

When we got to his mother’s house, Daniel went upstairs to try on his outfit and make some final adjustments. I sat in front of the TV with his mother, watching the tall, blonde Norwegian royal family exit the palace. From there, they would be taken to the center of Oslo, to greet the people as they did every Syttende Mai. Once in a while, the channel would show newscasters, some of them dressed in traditional clothes and some not, interviewing people all across Norway. Daniel’s mother would sometimes laugh because people from Bergen had very peculiar accents or she would point out the different details on the bunad that indicated which part of the country each person was from. I learned that the traditional outfits of each region had different colors, designs, and embroidered details: the women’s dresses are much more intricate than the men’s outfits, and are therefore a better indicator of origin. I learned that these outfits are typically passed down from generation to generation, and some Norwegians have bunads that are hundreds of years old. When Daniel walked downstairs, he looked incredibly happy: I knew he was proud to finally be able to wear a bunad on May 17th—something that was a true badge of his Norwegian-ness.

The Norwegian Royal Family

At brunch, two things struck me. First, the massive amount of champagne. (I counted the people sitting in the living room. Then I counted the bottles sitting on the counter: there were approximately two per person.) Second, I noted that I was the shortest person in the room by at least a foot—ten-year-olds included. I looked around the room and decided that I should make no attempt to outdrink these Scandinavians towering over me—which was definitely the right decision.

At brunch, I sat with a group of girls, eating fresh salmon and colorful berries. They each told me what part of Norway they were from, and what details on their bunad would indicate this origin. Since we were in Oslo and most of the people at the brunch were students who had come to the city for University, there was a huge variety of colors and designs in the room. I was startled to learn that some of these dresses were insured for $10,000 or more. I knew then why Daniel was so proud to finally own a bunad: although he maintained that his was “cheap,” it was something that confirmed him as a Norwegian, something that showed people around him how proud he was of his country. Now, he could celebrate one of the most Norwegian days of the year as a Norwegian, and be recognized as such, at least by strangers who knew nothing of his mixed background. He didn’t want to be seen as Italian and Norwegian—he wanted to be able to fully embrace his Norwegian identity, especially on such an important day.

It made sense to me then why he was working so hard to get his Norwegian citizenship, even though he might have to give up his Italian citizenship as a result. I was no longer confused as to why he refused to speak to me in Italian. I understood that the bunad would allow him to identify with the country that had become so central to his life. So, on that Syttende Mai, I attempted to join him in singing the Norwegian national anthem: “we love this country/as it rises forth/ rugged, weathered, above the water.”30dd3d38f63d4d4ff606fca9073bd9fb

Je Ne Capisco Nada

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A plane ride from Marseille to Barcelona only takes an hour. I figured a quick weekend trip from France to Spain would be simple; I could get to the city mid-morning and have most of the day to explore and play tourist. I had been abroad for six months already—I guess this gave me an inflated sense of confidence in my travel skills. I assumed that if I followed the right directions, I would be able to navigate seamlessly from airport to bus to city center to Air B n B apartment.

Turns out, things were not so simple.

It all started out smoothly: my partner and I took a Saturday morning EasyJet flight from Marseille to Barcelona. Everything was on time and we got there by 11AM. At the airport, duffel bags in hand, we waited in line to get tickets for a bus ride into the city. This wait didn’t surprise me: this was Spain after all, and based on what I had been told, I expected that everything would be moving a bit slowly. Even compared to the relaxed place I had grown used to in the South of France.

At the airport bus terminal, we were surrounded by tourists speaking English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and various Scandinavian languages; the majority of the people there were young like us, and oh so hip and European. They looked like they had also come to explore one of Spain’s coolest cities and had dreams of sleeping in, seeing Gaudían architecture, experiencing a vivid nightlife, eating tapas, and taking sangria-fueled walks by the water. In hopes of having an original experience in Barcelona, we had rented a cute apartment in Gràcia—supposedly an up-and-coming neighborhood. The place was close to Park Güell, one of the city’s best sights, but was surprisingly one of the least crowded parts of the city. I felt so clever that we would be avoiding the hordes of tourists and staying in a part of Barcelona that felt authentic, but would still have easy access to the city’s major attractions.

We eventually got on the bus from the airport to the city center, and after a 45-minute ride found ourselves in Plaça de Catalunya, Barcelona’s biggest plaza. I recalled reading that the 44 toward Gràcia, the bus we were supposed to take in order to get to the apartment, stopped there. There was a bus at the curb, but when I spoke in Spanish to the driver, he replied impatiently that I had the wrong bus. After this, my partner insisted that we find someone at a nearby tourist booth who spoke English. I hadn’t come to Spain to speak English, but it was getting late, so we inquired. The person at the booth told us that the 44 stopped on the side of the street where we had first gotten off. We crossed back, got on the bus and paid five euros for two tickets. Things were looking good—we were only an hour behind schedule and we were one step closer to experiencing the real Barcelona! (A side note: this was not the first time in my travels where my stubbornness and insistence on speaking English as seldom as possible would get me in trouble—nor would it be the last.)

We were halfway to the top of a very steep hill (which Barcelona has a lot of, it seems) when the bus driver said something incomprehensible. I then realized that Catalàn is a lot further from Spanish than I had previously thought. Fortunately, he repeated the phrase in Spanish—we were supposed to get off the bus and get another one, this one was out of service. Our tickets would be accepted if we showed them to the next driver. So we got off and waited. Then I heard a group of people speaking Italian—thank God! A language that I could actually understand and communicate in, I hoped that they would be able to confirm if we were getting on the right bus. I had written down the name of the stop and the address of the apartment, but had no cell reception or wifi to help me check that we were going the right way. I was far too self-righteous about this, but I had insisted on having an authentic travel experience.

With the Italians, I talked about getting to Park Güell, where they had just been. Unfortunately, it was much too steep to walk there from where we were. Since they were going back into town, where we had just come from, we got on a bus on the opposite side of the street—for which we had to buy new tickets. After fifteen minutes, we got off at a stop that had the same word in it as the name of our stop but, unsurprisingly, was the wrong one: the street names around us were completely different from the ones in the directions on our Air B n B reservation.

Despite these frustrating circumstances, I couldn’t help but notice the way the city looked from the top of that hill, I observed the unique architecture, the elderly people arm-in-arm taking post-siesta walks, and the way the sun was hitting the water down below.

But we could not be distracted—it was already two and a half hours past the time we had told the renter that we would meet her, and I was starting to get nervous that she would leave or cancel the reservation altogether. So I asked an elderly couple that was strolling by if they knew of the street we were staying. In some strange combination of Spanish, French, and Italian, I asked for the address and tried to explain to them that we had just made a series of mistakes and needed to get to this apartment as soon as possible. They nodded, looking concerned and confused—admittedly, I probably looked extremely tired and panicked. They then proceeded to argue with each other for ten minutes, without a glance back at me. I assume the discussion had lots of: “it’s that way!”, “no it’s farther up the hill!”, “no, it’s near so-and-so’s house.” Eventually, they turned back to me to ask me a few questions. I attempted to answer coherently but lot of gesturing was required to really get the point across. In the end, I figured out that they were saying that we were supposed to go up a set of stairs and turn left and then go down that street and turn right again. So we did exactly that, hoping these last few hours of struggling since getting off the plane would finally pay off.

Fifteen minutes later, we were standing in front of Carrer de Pasteur número 25, ringing the doorbell. There was no immediate answer, just a grey cat winding himself around our legs. Had our hostess left? After a few minutes of silently willing her to come to the door, praying in my new mix of Spanish, French, and Italian that I pretended was really Catalàn, unsure of which language I should choose if anyone answered, a young woman in a white sweater finally poked her head out and asked me in perfect English, “are you Alessandra?” At last! Someone, other than my partner and the Italians we had met an hour prior, I could fully understand and talk to! My stubbornness and frustration gave way to relief at finally being able to communicate coherently. I felt proud that I had been able to get us where we needed to be, using all the romance languages in all the combinations I could conjure.

Hearing our hostess’ English at the end of that long day was a huge relief. The very cute, very modern apartment and the freshly baked chocolate cake we found on the table there were not bad rewards either.