Robert De Niro's waiting...

Here in the Languedoc, you are almost as likely to hear Spanish on a daily basis as you are French. My vet often goes off on a Spanish tangent and at my Thursday night Flamenco dance class, it's very easy to imagine that I'm living in rural Spain. Tapas are on almost every menu, and I think the ratio of cava to champagne in my wine rack is prettily heftily in favour of the former.

Luckily, I minored in Spanish at university (although everytime I go to Barcelona I realize how useless Mexican Spanish is in Catalonia....), and I manage to pick up words here and there. I love the Spanish-influenced flavour of the local accent.

But I dream of being able to speak Italian. I've been trying to teach myself, unsuccessfully, for the last 5 years or so. I have all the books and CDs and even had a private tutor for awhile. The tutor was interesting because of course she was teaching me Italian in French, which just made it all the more difficult for me to concentrate.

I think I get to a point where I have a good grasp of the language, then I'm in Italy, and all I can do is speak in French. It's like my brain is telling me I need to be speaking a foreign language, so hey, French will do. All of my efforts at studying Italian fly right out the old finestra.

If only I lived over by Nice, where the chances of picking up Italian would be so much easier. Although, of course, then I'd probably be living in a shoe box, unable to afford to go to Italy, but nevermind. I guess I'll just have to continue the old-fashioned way.

Although I'm starting to think that maybe you can't teach an old dog new tricks. I watch the little ladies gadding about speaking French and English with perfect accents and I have to fight back the envy. My 7-year old says that she wants to start learning Italian with me. That's like saying Carl Lewis wants to start going running with me. Nothing like a 7-year old multi-linguist to spur you into action.

I know I'm lucky to be able to speak passable French. I see so many foreigners living here who struggle daily, unable to speak the language. And while I know that I should concentrate on perfecting my French, there's just something about Italian that makes me dreamy. They say the best way to learn a language is take a lover who speaks that language, but somehow I doubt the Duke would be up for that, no matter how supportive he is.

How about you? Any fluent Italian speakers out there? I'll trade you half my French for half your Italian...