When I was 16, I decided that I wanted to speak 5 languages by the time I was 25. (Full disclosure: it was originally 7, but I couldn’t decide on what the 7th should be and, as much as I’d love to learn Cherokee, when would I ever get to use it? So I scaled it back to 5.) When I was 21, I realized that I wasn’t doing much about my goal so I hired an Italian and a French tutor, Gianluca and Milene, respectively, since I’d already studied Spanish and Japanese.

I attach to languages and boys who don’t like me really quickly so, before I could even have a decent conversation in Italiano, I wrote a little almost something that I almost remember

Posso contare
tutte le stelle in cielo
aspettando finché uno cambia

Ma, [something I don’t remember]
Sei sempre lo stesso
Ed adesso, non posso rimanere

Translation:
I could count
all the stars in the sky
waiting until one of us changes

But, [something I don’t remember]
You are always the same
And now, I can’t stay

The funny thing is, I would never write something this basic in English but everything just sounds so much better in Italian. Gianluca loved it. He was convinced that I was just pretending to be a beginner, not accepting that Spanish was covering a multitude of sins. He started bringing me the equivalent of Shakespearean sonnets. It was sweet, though way above my comprehension level.

I never wrote anything in French. It’s fun to speak, but the spelling is a nightmare.