ODYSSEUS 2000
Personal Identity and social living

ITINERARIES
stories of voyages into the world

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Third part

A dive into the void

Language and identity

Our foreign friends covered a long way to come here (through the space and in their mind), but we are not ready to welcome them. It is just like a guest: you know he/she is coming but you don’t worry about it until she/he knocks on your door. At this moment you realise you are not ready and we’d rather answer: “nobody is at home”. But the other one, who is waiting, cannot understand because he speaks another language. So, even if he/she understood that there will be no good welcome, he/she keeps on knocking because there is too much route behind him/her and he/she has to have some rest.

Let’s go on with our novel starting from the linguistic problem: I am starting from the happiest witness: she is a girl, she is 13 years old and since last year she lives in Jesi:
“I write down what I like. I try to translate in poetry what I feel. When I feel like I write a poem or a song.”
“What language do you use to express your thoughts? Italian or Spanish?”
“Both. I look for the most suitable words both in Italian and in Spanish…”
“Inside your head you have got both the two languages and they work together. Is it true?”
“Yes.”
“And do you like poetry?”
“Yes, I like reading books and poems. What I do not know is much more interesting than what I already know. I am very curious; I want to find out the meaning of everything. At school I am studying Carducci, but the first poet I loved has been Giacomo Leopardi. I liked “Il sabato del villaggio” and other poems too, the things he said, the way he wrote those things….”
“When you came here you did not know any Italian word. Anyhow you loved Leopardi immediately: did you discover the Italian language and Leopardi at the same time?”
“Yes, it is true. When I went to school I “made a mess” with the language, I didn’t understand anything and everybody was always asking me: “What are you saying?”. My God! What a situation! Then I slowly learnt. My friends helped me a lot in finding out the right Italian words, but they wanted to learn Spanish in return!”.
 “When she was coming home- says her mother- she usually was anxious and said: ‘mum, let all your affairs and help me. I want to understand the meaning of this word’. But sometimes I was not able to do it, I was not so good in Italian. But she was going on saying: ‘my friends told me this word: what does it mean? I want to understand’. She was very curious even in this sense: she really wanted to understand.”

Here is the poem that Luisanna gave me as a gift.

Il BRILLO DEL CUORE

Il cielo sta nero e pieno de nubi
la notte silenziosa e piena de nebia
il vento acarisia mi piel piena DE AMORE
per il BRILLO DEL CUORE.

E tanta la paura che avate il mio corpo
una corriente de aire come le onde del mare
ché ti abbracia il talone.

C'è la oscurità che mi fa sentire paura
ma le estelle del cielo me danno la luce
E il cuore pieno d'amore mi fa pendere
coragio per caminare en queste vento nero
che mi fa sentire sola.

Senza nessuno a canto a mi. Solo il mio
cuore che BRILLA D'AMORE.

L'arberi si  muovono, un grido si sente,
un suspiro de amor de voce lontana.
E sento

un BRILLO che esce del mio profondo
essere interno. (INTERIORITA')

Luisanna Rosario Andùgar
San Domingo

It is a very nice and happy witness, just like the atmosphere at their home. We chatted for a couple of hours in front of the cassette recorder and they told me their problems in my country. All at sudden her younger sister entered the conversation and they began to interview the interviewer! In their case the problem of the language is easier to solve because of the similarity between Spanish and Italian. This favours a sort of mélange of the words in a new invented language. The age of the two sisters too is perhaps an element that makes the fitting-in easier: they were 12 and 13 years old.

The impact with a foreign language can be felt in many different ways from the people interviewed. Every time there is a new element that creates the difference. It can be the age at the moment of the arrival, the similarity between the two languages, the level of the social disease, the kind of welcome. There can be a different level of knowledge of their parents’ language also for the children who were born in the new country. I think that we have to consider also the daily life, the way it is organised, the kind of job ?it often is disqualified according to their studying-, the drop of the social status of the family in the new country.  They usually do the jobs, that other people reject and they have a little retribution. The life at home is very important too: commodities or diseases have a big influence. Anyhow there are familiar situations in which many different languages live together at the same time. Let’s see the way they are cohabiting and how do people feel this situation.

“How do you speak with your child?”
“I speak Chinese. Sometimes he answers in Chinese but he often answers in Italian. I insist and he goes on speaking Italian. I have to ask him: Please answer in Chinese. He accepts with many difficulties.”
“At home what language do you speak?”
“My husband and I speak Chinese. My son understands but he has difficulties in speaking.”
“Where did you learn Italian?”
“I attended a course organised by the Municipality of Jesi.”
“Do you meet Chinese friends?”
“There aren’t many Chinese families. I met two of them but they don’t have children. We often went out   with Italian families that have got children, with my son’s friends. We meet when there are some parties, birthdays. We seldom   go out in the week-ends.”

Even more complex is the situation of mixed families, with parents coming from different countries and with a child born and grown-up in another town.
“Your wife is Philippine and you are Nigerian: what language do you speak at home?”
“We speak English.”
“Don’t you speak in Italian?”
“It’s my son, who was born here, who speaks Italian very well, even with the Jesi dialect cadence. When he hears us speaking in English he says: ‘Hey, speak my language, Italian, please’ “
“Is English the official language in your countries of origin?”
“In Nigeria, yes, English is the official language. In the Philippines it’s the second language instead, after the local language, the Tagal”.

At the beginning the language is a problem for all the foreigners, adults and children. Only a few people interviewed, those who came because of their studying, had the possibility to attend Italian language courses. But, even their knowledge of Italian language is not perfect. Their children were born here in a family in which people usually speak a different language, English or Chinese. Italian is just a second language: it is necessary only because of social reasons. Thanks to the school fitting in children can speak Italian better than their parents and use it as their first language.
Similar situations are quite common among foreign families. Sometimes both the two languages have the same importance and it is hard to understand which is the main one.

“Which language do you speak at home?”
“Spanish. But our children answer in Italian. Our daughter speaks good Spanish too. She knows the difference between the two languages. Last summer we went to Ecuador and Peru and she spoke Spanish all the time. Back in Italy she had problems with her Italian. On the other hand our son understands Spanish but answers only in Italian. He uses Spanish words when he’s speaking Italian. A few years ago we went to France for a trip and we met a group of Spanish tourists. Our daughter was very surprised when she heard other children speaking like her. She thought nobody else spoke like us.”

There is, instead, another family who has got just the opposite problem: the main language is Italian and now the daughter would like to learn some Albanian in order to speak with her friends in Albania.
“Marina, how does she feel at school?”
“She feels really at her ease. She went to the nursery school too, for two years, she is well fitted in, she doesn’t have any problem with the language, and she has got many friends. Today she got two good marks, two top marks and she is really happy.”
“Do you speak with your daughter about your country?”
“Yes, a lot. We told her that we will go to Albania in a short time and she is really happy, she wants to know when the ship leaves, she asks, wants to know Albanian words. Last year we went there and she was sad because she couldn’t speak even if she understood everything. So she wants me to teach her how to speak Albanian. But it is so hard, because she always hear people speaking Italian and even at home we got used to speak Italian. When we were there she met some children and now she wants to meet her friends again.”
“Does she have the possibility to read any Albanian children books, in order to better remember the language?”
“No, but I try to speak Albanian with her. It is not easy because, when someone comes home we speak Italian... There is another Albanian family here, but when children meet they always speak Italian even if that child has got other Albanian relatives here and at home they speak Albanian more than us.”
“I would like to ask you if you like reading and if you read Albanian books?”
“I like reading but I read Italian novels: How can I find Albanian books? I must buy 20 or 30 books when I go there and then bring them back. It is not possible.”

The gradual desertion of the mother tongue is not a precise choice. It comes from the difficulty in maintaining this tie. The mother would really like not to lose it, but she hasn’t got sufficient occasions and she even doesn’t have any books written in her language.

Let’s go and see the story of some children, who were born in another country and then moved to Italy together with their parents. So they had to learn a new language, in order to substitute the old one. These children lived their problem together with their parents, shared the difficulties, they helped each other and observed everything. Perhaps they looked at their parents’ problems in silence or maybe openly. Their father was covering a new and uncertain position.

Further more, in the story I am introducing, there is no similarity between the two languages, Italian and Arabic, and we also feel the latter as a complete foreigner. Here in Italy we have a cliché that express this feeling in a very clear way: when two people are speaking but they can’t understand each other, people usually say: “Are you talking Arabian?” (Who knows how do Arabian people define a similar situation?).
“Who taught you to speak so a good Italian?”
“My husband really helped me. Further more I always watched TV”
“I taught you Italian, isn’t it true? ?says her youngest child- and my eldest brother too. He is 23 and he helped me too.”
“But you are attending the primary school, aren’t you? You don’t have any problem.”, tells him the interviewer.
“Yes, and then I will attend the secondary and the high school.”
“My children had some difficulties with the language at the beginning, above all the eldest. Then a municipal teacher came to us on alternate days. When we arrived my children didn’t attend the school, they only learnt Italian. Otherwise they couldn’t understand the lessons. The eldest was settled in a class of three years younger pupils, because here you are studying Latin, in Tunisia they don’t. Now he is attending the first year at the Ancona University; he is studying Biology.”
“Was it difficult for you to learn Italian?”
"Yes, of course. The Arabian language is very different, but I studied French in my Country and it helped me in learning Italian. But now I am forgetting French! I would like my youngest child not to forget Arabian, so that he can speak with his grandmothers and cousins when we go to Tunisia.  But last week a teacher asked me not to speak Arabian with my child.”

In this family there are three languages. This could be a great opportunity for another family but it is fatiguing for them to have a good command of all the three linguistic codes. French has been the first sacrificed language because it is useless. Italian is necessary. So we try to do as much as possible to learn it: we watch Television, we speak with our children. Arabian must not be forgotten, but it is not easy to teach it to the children. The incomprehension of the teacher is very interesting: he suggests not to speak Arabian at home. (It looks like an ironic metaphor: “are you talking Arabian?”). It is clear that the teacher paid attention only to the “language of the school” and not to the “language of everyday life”. He thought that the pupil was not able to speak a good Italian and he just wanted to give him a good advice to accelerate his learning and to give him the possibility to follow the lessons at school.
Somehow he told him to study more and more at home: “Speak Italian”. We cannot imagine if that teacher had thought, just for a second, of the possibility of being at the place of the Tunisian family:  they are in a foreign country and they must teach their children both the Italian language and their mother tongue, because all the relatives and friends are still living over there and there lies their origin. Perhaps one day they will have the possibility to come back home.
The pupil that arrives at school seems to be “empty of history” and must be filled in by a new language”. I guess that this teacher simply expressed an “honest way to think”, very common among all of us and upon which we should have to reflect a bit more.

The conversation with the Tunisian family goes on. The son always intervenes; he wants the interviewer to pay attention to him, to show how clever he is, because he can write some Arabic words. His simple behaviour reminds us that the route is not from “one language to another” but from “one language to two languages”. The latter reveals true difficulties, because the relationship between the two languages is not clear at all: whether it is or not an equal relationship. Which is the “first language”? The mother tongue, which is not considered at all in the new country, or the new language, the one that their parents are not able to speak?

“My child speaks Arabian quite well, but he can’t write it. He is a little confused because he is learning Italian and Arabian at the same time. Our friends too are Arabian and we speak only our language. I don’t have only these friends, I have some Italian friends too; they come and see me and I go and see them.”
“You speak a perfect Italian. And Arabian?”
“I speak Arabian very well and I can also read and write, because I studied in Tunisia until the third year of the Primary school.”
“When do you have the possibility to read in Arabian?”
“When I receive some letters from my cousin. I have a friend who works at a newsagent’s and sometimes he gives me some Arabian newspapers. Rarely there are Arabian directions on food. When I arrived I was 7 years old and I read the directions on the wrappings of Kinder. So I could practice.”
Once again an ingenuous gesture suggests us that it is better to start from real situations, from the daily life: the eldest brother read the directions upon the Easter eggs in Arabian.

This difficulty in the relationship between the two languages exists also in the other interviews realised in the other European countries. Here are, for example, two witnesses collected in Lleida, Spain. They involve a Moroccan and an Algerian family.
“What language do you speak at home? And with other people and friends….do you speak Catalano?”
“My husband and I, we speak Arabian…the children speak Catalano among them and with other friends…our children speak Castellan with us…I can speak a little Castellan just for the essential things…my husband taught me and I studied it.”

“What language do you speak at home?”
“We speak Castellan, our daughters do not speak Arabian and I am forgetting it. I want my children to go to a school where they can learn Arabian. I am very sorry that they cannot speak Arabian. When I am at the phone with my father he usually gets angry because he cannot understand me anymore. There are too many Spanish words in my conversations.”

“My father does not understand me anymore” says a woman who is trying to find a solution attending an Arabian language course: now this is her main problem. Let’s stay in Lleyda. The mother coming from Cameroon (the one who “looks like an European Girl”, according to the interviewer) gives a very good example of the way to face the problem of the multilingualism. At her home they speak English, French and Castellan. Further more she speaks a dialect with her mother but she does not want her son to learn it, in order not to make confusion. With her son- he lives with his grandfather and not with her-, on the contrary, she speaks French because she doesn’t want him to forget this language.

It is really surprising the number of languages existing in certain families. In the first part I told the story of a Syrian woman, who had to speak Turkish at school even in her home country, then she learnt German. At the beginning her sons spoke German with their father and Syrian with their mother. Then they all moved to Sweden and they had to learn Swedish. Now she speaks German with her children, Syrian with her friends, Swedish in the town or at school and, if it is necessary, she speaks a little English and Turkish too. These are five different languages. The demographic features of this area, Bergsjön, where many foreign people and just a few Swedish people live, probably influence this situation.
There is a Bosnian family in Bergsjön who offers an example of multilingualism.
“How did you learn Swedish?”
“I learnt it thanks to the SFI courses. It means Swedish for foreigners. These are free.”
“What language do you speak at home?”
“Bosnian”
“Do you speak other languages too?”
“I speak Russian. We had to learn it at school. I can speak also a little Italian and Arabian. My daughter is learning English and French. My brother can speak German, since he lives in Germany.”

In Bergsjön there is a particular situation. Most of the foreigners come from countries in which there is a multilingualism (Turkey, Lebanon, Bosnia). Furthermore the concentration of foreigners in the area is very high. In the two schools that take part to our project 90% of the pupils are foreigners and they speak more than 60 different languages. During the visit at their school I asked the children ?in English- where they were from and they immediately answered: “I come from Kurdistan, I come from Iraq, I come from Bosnia”.  It seems to be a unique linguistic and social laboratory, perhaps even too particular. In order to know “foreign” pupils it would be better for them to be in contact with a school attended by a Swedish majority, instead of finding Spanish or Italian children. They could also meet other schools with the same pluralism. For us it is a very good example of a situation that could take place in our countries too in a few years.

The stories collected in Weiblingen, Germany, are very interesting too. We can find there many second-generation immigrants. They moved to Germany when they were children with their families and now they grew up and have their own new families. In many cases they got married with a man or a woman coming from their same country. The duplicity between the first and the second language is still very strong, even after many years.

“Who taught you German?”
“I learnt German at school. But I went back to Greece for some years after the second year of the Primary school. My mother sent me some German books, but I had no practice. So I lost almost a half of my German knowledge. When I came back to German I had to learn the language another time. My mother could not help me because she speaks only Greek”
“You speak German very well. And what about your mother tongue?”
“I can’t speak a good Greek because I spent my childhood and adolescence in Germany and I attended the school there. I began to work in Germany and I had almost all German friends. Anyhow, since we can see a Greek channel on the TV I usually watch the news and I can understand many things, also thanks to my husband. For me it is very important that my son Georgios learns not only German but also Greek at school. I always do the homework with him and in this way I can learn grammar and new words. My husband thinks that is very important to me to learn Greek, because he says the a Greek must know her language. He speaks Greek really better than German, even if he was born in Waiblingen.”
“What language do you speak at home?”
“I speak Greek with my husband, but when I have some difficulties I speak both Greek and German. Anyhow I try to tell a whole sentence in just one language. In this way my children won’t get used to this mixing. With the younger I speak above all German, because I want him to socialize at the Nursery school. Georgios, the eldest, already knows German. So I speak Greek with him, because I want to practice my mother tongue.”

The situation of Greek people is really particular. There is a sort of continuous commuting between Germany and Greece. The following lady had to learn German many times and the same happened with Greek, her mother tongue. This weaving appears in this story too.

“Who taught you German?”
“Even if I was born in Germany I have spoken for a long time only Greek because my parents used to speak their mother-tongue. Another drawback was not having attended the infant-school, because my parents didn't have enough time to take me there and to pick me up and it was too far to walk there. When I was 6 years old I underwent an operation for appendicitis and at the hospital I was obliged for the first time to speak German with the doctors, the nurses, the other patients. Later I started to go to the primary school. I was in the German class because I was in the right age, but I was too young for the Greek one. On the one hand it was very difficult for me to manage to follow the lessons because they were in German, on the other hand I got used quite rapidly to it. From the second year I started attending the Greek class, too, and so from Monday to Friday some afternoons were spent on Greek lessons. I went on for 2 years and for me it was a horror to live completely engaged in school. When we went to Waiblingen from Neustadt my parents enrolled me at the Greek class of the Karolingerschule. I had free afternoons again, at last and I could do my homework, it was all much more cheerful. In this school I also took my first diploma. Moreover my teachers appreciated very much my stress less pronunciation.”

“It was so horrible, for me, to stay at school for the whole time”: this is the price a girl had to pay to maintain the knowledge of two languages. It is funny that she could attend the German school before than the Greek one (two years later)
Let’s hear the story of another Greek lady. I found this story very interesting. She is an interpreter indeed, she is an expert in having different languages living in your mind together. When she takes examinations she always fails because she doesn’t know her mother tongue quite good.

“You speak German perfectly. What about your mother-tongue?”
“I attended school in Greece only up to the third year at the primary-school, then I have attended only German schools. So I have spoken very bad Greek for long and I have had lots of troubles with the language when I interrupted my studies in Stuttgart to go on in Thessalonica. My parents didn’t receive a good education so their vocabulary is small and at the beginning mine was small too. At University I could make myself understood in spite of my clear German accent. Often I had to look up in a dictionary because I didn’t know some Greek words. At that time I used to read a lot of Greek books and newspapers to get used to a better Greek. I have fought for long to understand if my mother tongue was Greek or German. For this reason I made a big mistake once! After the end of my studies I applied to be an interpreter at the EC and I was the only Greek who passed a very difficult entrance examination. To become a conference interpreter you should attend a six months seminar divided into three parts; after every two months an examination was provided and you had to pass it to go on. Since I offered myself as a Greek mother tongue, now I would have probably been an interpreter, but on the contrary I upset this unique opportunity of a very interesting job.
“What language do you speak at home?”
“When my daughter was still a baby I used to speak a little German with her, but only when we were alone. I have tried to bring her up as a bilingual, but I’m the only one who speaks German among our relatives, friends and Greek acquaintances who don’t understand German at all. So I decided to stop; when we came here three years ago she only knew some German words, then she went to a Greek-German primary school and she learnt German. Margarita now speaks a fluent German but she makes many mistakes and she doesn’t have a wide vocabulary. Her Greek is much wider. My son goes to a nursery school where he is the only Greek child. This has meant an uncertainty because he has no Greek assistance. He has been obliged to speak German with the other children immediately. My children speak a mixture of Greek and German and they don’t have a preference, it depends on whom they are talking to. Since my husband doesn’t speak German at home we speak only Greek.”

In the dialogue with the Tunisian family, the interviewer tells to the youngest child: “you did not have any problem with the language, you were lucky, you went to the Nursery School”. In the last story the lady describes the experience of the Nursery School as a situation of uncertainty, with no assistance at all: just like a tightrope walker without any net.
On the contrary there is a Turkish dame that describe a method invented by her brother in order to make her able to speak German.

“Where did you learn German?”
“My eldest brother was very demanding. When we came to Germany, every two days he used to write to us ten new German words on a piece of paper. In the evening we were examined. To tell the truth we were angry with him, but we learnt all the words because the eldest brother has a peculiar role in a Turkish family. Now I have to admit that this way of teaching was not bad at all. About three months later our vocabulary was so wide that we could understand German children when we played with them. I have studied German at school.”
“You speak German quite well. What about your mother-tongue?”
“I’ve been working in our grocery for a few years and I have to deal with foreign customers, above all. So my German gets worse and worse because I’d need to practice. One German friend of mine, who now lives in Spain, came and visited me some time ago. She thinks I make more grammar and syntactical mistakes than before. I speak only Turkish with my fellow-countrymen.
“What language do you speak at home?”
“I speak Turkish with my husband because he speaks very bad German. He can only communicate by the so-called “language of Tarzan”. I speak both German and Turkish with my eldest son, but only German with the youngest because he refuses to speak Turkish. This hurts me a bit because he should learn his mother tongue otherwise he won’t be considered as a real Turkish when he grows-up because he can’t pronounce the “r” very well. For this reason my husband sometimes reproaches me, he says: “You spend the whole day with Serhat and you should be an example for him. But be careful of what you say, you start saying a sentence in Turkish and you end in German”. On the contrary I have been able to bring Tayfun up as a bilingual; he speaks very fluent Turkish and correct German.”

Even in this family there are many typologies: the “teacher-brother”, the eldest son is bilingual, the second one rejects his mother tongue, the husband can communicate only through “Tarzan’s language” and he gets angry when she does not teach Turkish to their child. The difficulty of the coexistence of two languages gets higher when the education level of the family is low. Further more in some families they speak only dialect, not the official language.
Here is what another Turkish woman, who lives in Waiblingen, tells:
“What about your mother-tongue?”
“I speak very bad and old Turkish. My father only attended the primary school and my mother is an illiterate, so I couldn’t learn Turkish from them. My parents’ vocabulary only concerned everyday life. From the way I speak my mother tongue, a Turk can understand the region I come from. Because of this lack it’s very hard for me to speak with a graduate Turkish person, our Turkish is too different.
“Do you ever read anything written in your mother-tongue?”
“I can read Turkish but I can’t understand it very well. I read above all religious books, the Koran and its different interpretations made by various authors. We don’t usually buy Turkish newspapers because we watch the news on TV by satellite. When I don’t understand something they say, I can ask my husband that knows Turkish better than me. But usually I don’t mind because I can watch the most important news on German TV.”
“Do you remember if it was difficult to learn German for you?”
“Not so much. I have never had any problems in learning languages, not even English.”
“And was it hard for your son?”
“Languages have always been a problem for him. He has grown up on his own, my husband and I were working for the whole day and when he was three years old he went to a full-time school. Then his language skills have improved thanks to the help of his classmates and I taught Turkish to him. I think it’s very important to know one’s mother-tongue first.”
“What language do you speak at home?”
“Sometimes German, sometimes Turkish. My husband usually speaks Turkish with the kids. He hardly speaks German, and our children mock him when he makes mistakes. I usually speak German with them.”

In many occasions the new language has been learnt just by going to school and trying to speak. It is interesting to underline that women had less difficulties than men in learning the new language. These stories of Turkish, Syrian and Bosnian women demonstrate this hypothesis. They were collected in Germany and in Sweden. It happened the contrary in the Arabian families we met in Jesi and in Lleida (“My husband taught me the language”).

There are now a couple of stories of Italian people who moved to Germany during the Sixties. In their experiences I can see the same stories of my relatives and friends and also the same difficulties of other travellers interviewed in Italy or in Spain. There is a lady who has been doing the same thing of the Algerian woman living in Lleida: the latter is looking for an Arabic language course because her father is angry with her. The former doesn’t know Italian very well. So she has been attending an italian language course for seven years.

“Was it difficult to learn German?”
“Not at all because when you are a child you can very easily learn a language. I have grown up as a bilingual and I have had no problems. My husband came to Germany when he was 16 so he had lots of difficulties. He works mostly with Italian people so he seldom speaks German. When he starts talking with German speaking people, they stop speaking correct German because they are talking to a foreigner. No one has such a behaviour with me because no one imagines I’m not German.

I want to tell you just a little ironic fact: when you meet “Tartan” you usually begin to speak in the same way in order not to embarrass him. Some years ago I saw a similar episode on an Italian beach. There was a guy coming from Senegal who was trying to sell some T-shirts and an Italian dame began to speak with him in the Italian version of the Tarzan’s language. This guy could speak a very good Italian, looked at her in a funny way and asked: “Why are you talking like that? Aren’t you Italian?”

Let’s go back to our dialogue.
“What about your mother-tongue?”
“We usually talk in Italian dialect at home. I have been going to an Italian school for seven years to learn standard Italian. My mother-tongue is difficult for me because I usually speak German and I also think in German.”
“What language do you speak at home?”
“It’s a chaos! My husband wants us to speak Italian with him because he can’t speak good German. I speak German with my daughters and they speak German when they are together. But we say bad words in Italian because they are better.”

This last sentence finally reveals what is real language of his soul. Apart from the likeableness of this sentence, this makes me remember of what a Peruvian friend, who lives in Jesi, said when he got angry because he could not find the right words: “ It is a difficult experience when you don’t have an adequate knowledge of the language and you are angry. You would answer to a person but you are not able to find the right words at the right moment. Once it happened to me and I must admit that it was really hard.”
 “You have to think about the right words for particular events and you have to do it before you have the occasion to use them.
”Yes, but when you need them, you can’t remember them, you are not spontaneous. It happened to me that someone offended me saying ‘Moroccan’, a typical Italian insult about foreigners. I wanted to answer, but I couldn’t find the right words in Italian. I felt so bad…I was angry and I did not know how to express it…it is an awful sensation…”

I end this tour in Waiblingen with the second Italian family that has been living in Germany for 22 years.
“Who taught you German?”

“I have studied German during the first three months of our stay. The German I’m speaking now derives from the one I spoke once. My German friends were the first who taught me the language, then I have attended a six weeks course.”
“Do you ever read anything written in your mother-tongue?”
“I read both German and Italian newspapers, but my wife and I have not time enough to read because our duties are opposite. This means that when I finish my duty my wife begins hers and vice versa. We both look after our youngest daughter at home. We can also watch ten Italian channels by satellite.”
“Do you remember if it was hard to learn German?”
“At the beginning it was very difficult, but now I can understand almost everything. Speaking is still a bit hard for me above all when I talk to my daughters. They can speak a very good German.”
“What language do you speak at home?”
I must confess that I always speak in the Neapolitan dialect with my wife. With the younger child I have to speak German because she doesn’t speak Italian at all. With Maria and Veronica I only speak Italian, but they prefer to speak German when they are together.

It takes many years to complete the transition from a language into another one, but how many? I cannot understand if I am asking myself the right question. I found a very interesting feature: in all these stories there is a long time that seems to be more a linguistic confusion rather than a bilingualism or multilingualism. It is not clear whether the transition is from “a language to another one” or “from a language to two different languages”. The original language has been frequently lost; some of the people interviewed are trying to recover it by way of language courses. The situations and the ways to react are different according to each individual. The loss of the mother tongue seems to be slowly irreversible. It becomes clearer and clearer as generations pass. Sometimes a whole generation is not enough. The loss of the mother tongue is a metaphor of the loss of the identity, which any immigrant experiments. This is an important clue that suggests a quite interesting topic: not all the human experiences give something more, complete the individual or enrich it. There can be experiences that involve a loss, that throw away pieces of the identity and make people feel empty. They stare at their empty memories, keeping silent because all the words have already got lost. I don’t know if I have described an exaggerate metaphor and I wonder if it is appropriate to describe the maturation process of any personal identity. In any maturation process there is a detachment, a differentiation from a former situation. It must be a conflictual and complex route. It is integrative and it includes ambivalent and conflictual moments. The new identity grows through this process.
But what is the identity? In the Italian dictionaries identity is defined like this: “the sense of one’s own being as an entity, different from any other entity. The exact consciousness of one’s own individuality and personality aims and limits”. These words give an idea of precision, of a certain situation. But the general impression is just the contrary: full of doubts, difficulties, troubles and confusion among words. Immigrants’ daily life seems to be a continuous effort to accept some conditions that are sometimes unbearable (a dive in the void). What does it mean, for an individual, to face a process like this? What strategies and modalities does he/she adopt to make tolerable the adaptation?
There is another clue that can help you. Our Peruvian friend who lives in Jesi can reveal it.
“A last question: racism and discrimination. Did they ever happen to you?”
“Well…no. I mean…it as hard at the beginning with my job. I started as a worker and it was difficult. I did not tell them that, in my country, I worked in a similar place and I was not a worker but an executive. I kept silent because…”
“Why?”
“Because…there is no precise reason…I don’t know why…I did not want the others to think that I was too haughty. They wouldn’t have accepted me. I arrived as a worker and I wanted to fit-in in that way. In a quiet way…so I accepted also difficult and heavy jobs but I have nothing to repent of, because at that time I had no troubles…I also met some Italian workers and some of them are still my friends. Nowadays I sometimes come back to the same farms where I began, even if I am not a worker anymore and I have a more adequate job. I still have good relationships with those people. But at that time I was considered as the foreigner that doesn’t understand what the others order…perhaps I could understand some peculiar things, but I think that everybody has got the same difficulties with a new job, because you have to learn. That’s quite normal! But I was considered as the foreigner who is not able to understand…that’s all.
Italian people are used to think that foreigners have to learn from them. They don’t realize that foreigners too can have something to learn.  Anyone of us can both learn and teach, but many Italian people guess that only the foreigners coming from Holland, Germany or other countries in North Europe can teach them something. But if foreigners are from South America or anywhere else, they are not able to teach anything. I often found this attitude here. I also met many open-minded people among the breeders I am working with. They listen to my advices concerning breeding. But there are other people, usually older, that are really uncommunicative. This is my experience… but I don’t think that this can be defined racism, even if one of those people said to another Italian: “but he is an immigrant from outside the European community!”. He offended me: why did he say these words? In my country we only say foreigner, we don’t need any other word. It has a negative meaning here in Italy: it means the last one, a miserable person. This is perhaps the only racism: to think that foreigners have nothing to teach and that they only have to learn.”

“Many Italian people guess that only the foreigners coming from Holland, Germany or other countries in North Europe can teach them something.”
This observation upon Italians is pitiless, but it offers the clue I was looking for. We can live in a foreign country and feel at our ease, well fitted-in in the society without loosing our original cultural identity. This can happen only at condition that we are well accepted, that our language and identity are accepted, that we don’t have to forget, to make differences, to substitute the old with the new.
Perhaps the identity can be created through contrasts, difficulties, detachments, overcoming, but not through the crossing out. Perhaps there is only this way to become a sort of bridge between two countries and two cultures: to know the new and to be accepted by it. I remember that during the first intercultural meetings with foreign witnesses, in the Primary school Conti, my friend Mohamed explained in a very simple way this kind of situation to some children who were 9 years old. He was living as a bridge in our country. One of the pupils who was very satisfied affirmed: “He has got everything double!”.

What happens when you are not accepted and it is hard to find the right words?
I end this third part of the “novel” mentioning a long dialogue with a friend of mine, a sociologist from Ancona:
“…My memories…when I arrived in Italy I really wanted to become Italian very quickly and in a total way. Perhaps the strength of this feeling is the obstacle to become a real Italian, because your aim is always a step far from you…and there is also the crossing out of the former reality, you try to deny it, not to see it nor consider it. I had this experience until I as 17, 18 years old…I felt so badly. Now I am in a ‘recovering’ phase, I feel better and I feel Italian at the same time. Once I tried to apply the same assimilation model that is in use in France with other ethnic groups. Now I can assert I am perfectly fitted-in. But I have been rediscovering the other side of my identity for ten years.”
“In some interviews ?I ask him- it came out that native people speak in a plain and stereotyped way with foreigners, when they recognise them from their appearance or from the way they speak the local language. It is a sort of second-class language. Can you tell me something about your experience?”
“The language is a fundamental communicational vehicle. Perhaps it is true. I must admit that I could speak Amaric very badly and I was recognisable because of this reason. It is an interesting problem... I think of the white people who lived in Ethiopia: I know an English man, who is the responsible of the Department of Sociology at the Addis Abeba University. He is bilingual: he speaks perfectly both Amaric and English without any strange accent. I wonder how do the other Ethiopian people feel him…”
“Perhaps he is simply a white that can speak the local language very well. However he is a white with a well-defined identity. Don’t you think so?”
“Yes. It is an interesting topic. Anyhow the language is very important to communicate and if you live in a double situation you can have many advantages. In my case I lost the fluidity of the Amaric language: I am in short of it. But mine is still a double experience and I realise that this offers to me many advantages. I have understood above all now thanks to my job. You already know that I am a sociologist. I feel it when I talk to my colleagues, that haven’t got the same experience. I have something more.  I have more means of observation than the others: I can analyse things from two different perspectives at the same time. This helps me a lot. This is no “bilingualism”, this is life experience. Perhaps an Italian finds more difficulties, even in the simple dialogue with other people.”
“I experienced it during the interviews. Sometimes I had the impression that the foreigner who was telling his/her story had some doubts concerning my skill to understand him/her. I felt something uncertain, a sort of suspense”.
“Mine can be also a disadvantage if I am too involved in the stories I am analysing. In this way I cannot consider the fact that reality is more complex than what I am able to see. You have to keep at distance if you want to find some peculiar aspects. Perhaps it is easier for you to be detached. I don’t know which is the best method…it is a very interesting topic. Let’s go back to our theme, “language-identity”. I verified what usually happens to children. I mean the fact that they learn easily and quickly the new language, in my own case the Italian language…”
 “But were you already speaking Italian?”
“Yes, you are right. My mother was bilingual. She studied in a college where Italian was an important subject. Anyhow I had this kind of experience. Perhaps it wasn’t the same Italian, it wasn’t correct. But after a little time spent in Italy I could speak Italian better than my mother. Perhaps our Amaric too was not so perfect in Ethiopia and it was recognizable. Since we arrived here I lost quickly my first language, Amaric. I can remember just a few words. My sister, ho arrived here in Italy later, can speak a good Amaric and Eritrean, even if she has been here for ten years. She has got a different way to live this situation. I can say that I   lost all the contacts with Ethiopia. She didn’t. She is still living between two different worlds. Not only in the language. I realise it because I see the way she considers the Italian problems. She knows Italian very well, both the written and spoken language, but she doesn’t pay any attention to the newspapers, because she doesn’t care about Italian problems. She is more interested in the Ethiopian events. In my case it happens just the opposite. These are two different situations and I don’t know why, what do they mean.
Anyhow it is true: children can learn a language very quickly and become a sort of cultural mediators of their families. But this doesn’t mean that they completely fit-in. perhaps their identity, their experience lies incomplete behind…I don’t know…this thing should be deepened…I had also other experiences concerning this problem different from the stories you told me. For example I met a Bengali family in London, the second generation. They speak English and then, at home, they are still bilingual, without any confusion….even if I have to repeat that a good linguistic skill doesn’t correspond to a “good” integration. I think that the same problem can be different according to the countries, to the integration/assimilation model, which is applied. I know the French modalities better than the others. That is why I found many differences with the examples you gave me. Perhaps the bilingualism has got different effects in France and in Germany.
“In France perhaps, it is easier to find out immigrants who were able to speak French before they left their home countries, because they come from Francophone Countries, like Senegal or Algeria. Don’t you think it another kind of problem?”
“Yes, it is true. Let’s go on with this conversation upon the language and the imperfect bilingualism. I want to give you a little example. In Addis Abeba we named the chewing gum with the name “mastica” deriving from the verb to chew. When I arrived in Rome I went to a café and I asked for a “mastica”. The barman stared at me in a funny way and could not understand me. I wondered why he couldn’t. It was a situation in which the communication was blocked.”
“It is similar to a dialectal sentence that we use in Jesi. Perhaps if you had been in Jesi they would have understood your words?”
“Perhaps…but if a person who lives in Jesi and can speak only the dialect went to Rome and found an incomprehension, he would not get stuck and he would understand that he could use another word.  He could manage on his own and find the right word used in Rome, “cingomma” in this case. On the contrary I had less possibilities to manage somehow in so an easy situation. I was immediately recognizable as a “Not Italian” that has got many difficulties. The command of the language is more limited and rigid.”
“A child can learn a language very quickly, but he/she hasn’t got a strong identity and is more subjected to contradictions than a grown-up. Don’t you think so?”
“Yes, but he/she is also more flexible. There are several psychopathologies concerning adult immigrants with a formed and rigid mental structure. These make the contact more difficult and increase the shock of the first impact. For certain cultures, where differences are greater, it is even more problematic.”
“Perhaps it depends on a common reaction towards the new country: people incline to mythicize it or they tend to mythicize their home country. What can you say on the basis of your experience?”
“I don’t know. In your survey and in your training course, how did you define the word ‘identity’?”
“We did not do it: it would be too easy.”
“I can imagine. It is a very difficult topic. Perhaps it also has got dangerous aspects. It is sufficient to think of what’s happening in the Balkan countries. At the same time it remains a central topic in the formation of a person. But, as you didn’t define it, I cannot add anything more. It is a very interesting theme.”
“There is only one certain thing: we understood that identity is an open concept. That is important. Now I am asking you to explore together this route. But I must admit that I don’t rather know what we will find and if it will be something final. I always have the sensation that there is something missing.”

“Sì, è vero, è un concetto molto fluido e forse riguarda non solo l'identità culturale o di gruppo, ma anche l'identità individuale. (...) Who knows? Perhaps I am living a recent phase of reworking of the Past. I still have the myth of Africa. I spent there the first years of my life and my actual identity was born there. Perhaps, with a new generation…I have been reading some researches about children of Muslims that are still belonging to the same religion even if they were born in New York…who knows?”

Who knows? Our conversation ended in this way. Perhaps integration has to have only a social meaning: to live together with different people that have a different culture and live in a different country. It means the skill to live together with more than one culture at the same time. Integration is not to be confused with the passage from a culture to another one that substitutes the first. There is always a “silent” aspect, which lies secretly in the people and which has to be rediscovered and valorised. Perhaps the meaning of the “new cultural identity” -if we have to find a meaning- is that of being aware of one’s own duplicity. You are both the old person and the new one. You don’t have to cancel any of your identities.
“It is a very interesting topic, that can involve dangerous aspects”, said my friend referring to Bosnia. I want to end this par of the novel using the words of a Bosnian writer coming from Sarajevo, Dzevad Karahasan that describes with these words his town:
“Sarajevo is, of course, an “interior” town according to the esoteric meaning: all the things you can find in the world are in Sarajevo too. It is reduced to the kernel but it exists, because Sarajevo is the centre of the world (and the external is always included in the internal, and in the centre too. That is what esotericism says). (…) Its fundamental principles are similar to those that are the basis of the tragedy. We can understand them by making a comparison.  The essential relationship among the elements of this system is the tension. It means that the elements lay one in front of the other and their opposition binds them. This opposition defines them (…) without losing the primordial identity and maintaining all the peculiar features that don’t belong to the main system. Each element enters the system with new features but without losing the old ones. Each element is, on its own, a whole complexity, formed by two parts connected by a relationship of opposition.
The fundamental sign of such a system is pluralism (…). Here is the main difference between Sarajevo and the chaotic contemporary medley of races in the West cities where the “Other” is just seemly the “Other”. Truly it is a dressed-up “Me”. It is the “Other” inside myself and the fundamental relationship consists in devouring each other. If you prefer you can define it as the including inferiors in superiors, the weakest in the strongest.”