The Half (and Half) Life of an Expat in Italy

When I first arrived in Italy, I bought a newspaper because I envisioned myself being fluent and cultured and on top of the Italian news. I figured I'd buy one every week.

It took me six months to read 10% that first newspaper, and I never bought another one again!

Though I occasionally pushed myself to read more in Italian, it felt like work. And since settling in a new country is stressful enough, I gave myself a break.

Sometimes, I'd watch movies in Italian, but more often than not, I cocooned myself with English films, my version of auditory comfort food.

For a long time, it felt like I would always cling to my Americanness, my English comforts of books and tv, and that I'd never truly feel comfortable in Italian.

But that has changed over the past three years.

When Languages Blur

Being married to an Italian has done wonders for my fluency (I highly recommend this strategy!). His English isn't as good as my Italian, so more often than not, we speak Italian or a strange hybrid of the two that only we understand.

Occasionally, I force him to watch a movie in English (with Italian subtitles), but 99% of the time, we watch Italian films (or American ones in Italian).

Somewhere along the way, I stopped needing subtitles, which felt pretty awesome. Unless the actors are speaking napoletano, which is impossible for even Italians to comprehend!

I read books on my Kindle, and I'm happy to say that I always have at least one book in Italian in my stack. For some reason, I find non-fiction books to be easier to understand than fiction in Italian. I love reading about natural healing and herbs, and doing so in Italian gives me the vocabulary to talk about it.

My entire life is a mix of English and Italian. I'm as likely to put cetrioli on the shopping list as "cucumbers." Or search online for something in Italian rather than English.

It's a strange but fun place to be. Doing things in Italian feels like less of a chore the more fluent I get. And being able to dance between the two languages feels like an accomplishment!