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Home Retirement/Living

Overcoming Linguistic Limitations

Kathleen Peddicord by Kathleen Peddicord
Jul 22, 2013
in Retirement/Living
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beautiful white buildings with blue rooftops on the cliffs of Santorini Island in Greece
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Overcoming Language Limitations

My husband’s strategy for communicating in a place where he doesn’t speak the local language is to use similar words from a language he does know delivered with a local accent. The craziest part of this approach is that, in Venice, where we are now, while not efficient, it’s proving effective.

If you don’t like hanging out with tourists, avoid Venice in July. Lief and I don’t enjoy life among the hordes, but here we are amidst them. Our travel schedules are dictated, more than anything else, by our son’s school calendar. Jack’s school year ended June 28; we departed Panama 10 days later.

Thus we find ourselves on Europe’s Mediterranean coast mid-peak season. The sun is strong, and midday temperatures are high. Prices are high, too, this time of year in this coastal region. But we’re not letting the heat or the inflated cost of everything bother us. Instead, we’re trying hard to make our own way, separate from the boat loads of other summer travelers we’re encountering everywhere.

Lief didn’t have time to visit the barber before leaving Panama City, so, our first day in Venice, he decided he’d like to have his hair cut.

The proprietress of the shop where I stopped to buy a pair of hand-stamped sconce shades (to use in the house we’re building at Los Islotes) apologized again and again, in Italian, for speaking no English. No, it’s we who should apologize, we responded, for speaking no Italian. She smiled then, as she showed us how she stamped each design on to each shade, section by section. The shades I chose share a pattern from a room in Venice’s Doge’s Palace. The lady showed me photos of the original design in a book from her shelf, then covered my shades in tissue paper for me.

Encouraged by the lady’s helpful manner, Lief decided to inquire about his haircut. As the lady wrapped my purchase, Lief spoke up in Spanish, “Donde puedo cortar?“…delivered with his best Italian accent and a motion in the direction of the top of his head.

“Ah!” she replied enthusiastically. “Si! Si!” She knew a place where Lief could go to be coiffed.

The lady grabbed Lief by the shoulder and spun him around to face the stone wall of her small shop. On the flat stone, she drew, with her forefinger, the route from her shop to the barber, a few blocks away. When she’d finished outlining the route, she cried out, “Ya!” and smacked the stone hard with her open palm, as if to say, “There you have it…piece of cake!”

Then she escorted us to the door and pointed us in the direction we should head. We found the barber with no problem, and Lief got the most expensive haircut of his life.

The friendly shopkeeper spoke only Italian. Elsewhere this trip, though, we have been humbled, as we always are traveling in this part of the world, by folks we’ve met, from wait staff to fellow restaurant diners, who switch effortlessly among three or four or more languages.

Lief and I both have spent the better parts of our lives in places where the locals don’t speak English. We should be more linguistically competent than we are. Lief speaks Spanish well enough, and I can get by in French, but that’s the extent of our language CVs. This month, starting here in Italy, we’re going to be reminded every day just how limited are our communication skills.

Thus Lief’s strategy. Here in Venice his Spanish takes on an Italian flair. The result has me giggling, but it’s getting us through the day (and Lief a new hairdo).

Kathleen Peddicord

P.S. When we were in Venice last, two summers ago with the kids, the outside of the Basilica di San Marco was covered with scaffolding. Now the work is mostly complete, and the frescos that adorn the facade of this city’s most famous church are again brightly, brilliantly, boldly restored and colorfully alive. The stone, too, of the church’s outside walls, and of each of its columns, glints fresh in the summertime sun.

Tags: Communicating OverseasKathleen PeddicordLanguage BarrierTraveling In ItalyTraveling In Venice
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Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord has covered the live, retire, and do business overseas beat for more than 30 years and is considered the world's foremost authority on these subjects. She has traveled to more than 75 countries, invested in real estate in 21, established businesses in 7, renovated historic properties in 6, and educated her children in 4.

Kathleen has moved children, staff, enterprises, household goods, and pets across three continents, from the East Coast of the United States to Waterford, Ireland... then to Paris, France... next to Panama City, where she has based her Live and Invest Overseas business. Most recently, Kathleen and her husband Lief Simon are dividing their time between Panama and Paris.

Kathleen was a partner with Agora Publishing’s International Living group for 23 years. In that capacity, she opened her first office overseas, in Waterford, Ireland, where she managed a staff of up to 30 employees for more than 10 years. Kathleen also opened, staffed, and operated International Living publishing and real estate marketing offices in Panama City, Panama; Granada, Nicaragua; Roatan, Honduras; San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Quito, Ecuador; and Paris, France.

Kathleen moved on from her role with Agora in 2007 and launched her Live and Invest Overseas group in 2008. In the years since, she has built Live and Invest Overseas into a successful, recognized, and respected multi-million-dollar business that employs a staff of 35 in Panama City and dozens of writers and other resources around the world.

Kathleen has been quoted by The New York Times, Money magazine, MSNBC, Yahoo Finance, the AARP, and beyond. She has appeared often on radio and television (including Bloomberg and CNBC) and speaks regularly on topics to do with living, retiring, investing, and doing business around the world.

In addition to her own daily e-letter, the Overseas Opportunity Letter, with a circulation of more than 300,000 readers, Kathleen writes regularly for U.S. News & World Report and Forbes.

Her newest book, "How to Retire Overseas: Everything You Need to Know to Live Well (for Less) Abroad," published by Penguin Random House, is the culmination of decades of personal experience living and investing around the world.

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