Learn the lingo
Last Summer, I spent a week learning Italian in Tuscany, which is where, as our tutor Francesca explained, the language is spoken at its most proper. A bit like Oxford English. Or the Queen’s. But my course was far from formal.
It was based at a converted 17th-century watermill in Posara in the Lunigiana, the remote northernmost corner of the region. Now owned by a British couple, Bill and Lois Breckon, its workings are long silent, but the millstream still gurgled away. At night, it was like a lullaby, as soothing as a gently lapping sea.
Depending on the weather, our lessons were either in the garden, on a terrace shaded by a grape vine or on squishy sofas in the lounge, each setting as far removed from a classic classroom as a plate of gnocchi from a roast with two veg.
The course was as much about place as prepositions, about Italy as Italian. We spent lots of time out and about, visiting interesting places, such as the handsome walled town of Lucca, where we walked around its 16th-century walls, saw Tintoretto’s Last Supper in the cathedral and had pasta with rabbit sauce in the historic Buca di Sant’antonio restaurant. Wherever we went, we had encounters with real Italians in the hopes of making ourselves understood in the real world as well as in class.
Sandwiched between the peaks of the Apennines and the Apuan Alps (where, in Carrara, Michelangelo got his marbles), the Lunigiana region is most famous as a place where medieval pilgrims journeyed between Canterbury and Rome along the Via Francigena. Nowadays, since it’s mostly off the tourist map, the locals rarely speak English, so Italian immersion therapy was the order of the day.
In the local Tuesday market in nearby Fivizzano, for example, Francesca sent us off to buy things. Some apples (‘mele’) in my case. I took care not to come back with a jar of honey (‘miele’) instead. Or, worse still, a couple of pigs (‘maiali’).
I did manage the apples and newspaper without a problem, but the week was inevitably littered with mistakes, some comical. In one lesson, I tried to explain how I like to work, ‘lavorare’, but used ‘lavare’ instead, telling the class how I liked to wash. We also had a few laughs at Francesca’s expense. When, for example, she explained in English how the village of Posara is so small ‘it only has a revolving priest’, and how she had studied teaching at a college in Florence ‘where I became certifiable’.
The Watermill (watermill.net) offers courses in Italian (next course 29 April), painting, creative writing and knitting. Prices from £1,445pp inclusive of all meals and drinks (both at the Mill and local restaurants), transfers from Pisa and several outings, but not flights.