In search of sfumatura
The average English speaker knows between 20,000 and 35,000 words and even at four years of age we have mastered about 5,000 words. Clearly it’s a lifetime of discovery. Avid readers, writers and students of grammar will naturally fall to the upper end of this range of words, and I’d like to think I’m somewhere in among them. So it’s been an awakening of sorts to start studying a new language and be back with the four year olds!
This is my fourth full year of weekly Italian lessons. After a big start back in 1999 when I took a trip to foreign language school in Florence, Italy, for 3 months, I languished in learning from the minute I moved to the Yarra Valley – life, distance, distraction took over. It was due to the movement of so many classes to the online environment during COVID, and the overwhelming need I had to make the most of lockdowns, that I was able to return to study. And its been such a joy.
I’m not sure how to quantify how many words I know but for the B1 level I am currently mastering, a little research indicates 5,000 seems about right. (Plus blessedly Italian is a familiar sounding language – the Latin base that is the foundation of Italian and English gives us much in common that I am forever grateful for.)
But there is one thing that truly frustrates me when I try to write and speak in this new language. The difference between knowing 5,000 words and 35,000 words can be summed up in one word! Sfumatura, which is the Italian word for nuance.
Sfumatura is how we bring meaning to our words, how we find the depth of description, the carriage of emotion, the speakable and the unspeakable. Nuance is the difference between pedestrian and powerful. Nuance is the marker of a great writer and communicator. Nuance is what makes a life story resonate, inspire and move.
So I will persist in the search for sfumatura and this next chapter will be about me living in Comiso, in Sicily, for six weeks over the Italian winter; writing, studying and more importantly immersing myself in the subtleties of daily life and language.
And meanwhile, there have been so many ways that learning a language has been meaningful for me.
Learning a language has helped me to:
- Develop better listening skills.
- Understand the deep roots and nuances of my birth language.
- Gain a deeper appreciation for the lives of those who can’t communicate easily.
- Give myself to slow and incremental growth instead of fast and furious – slow learning is key.
- Authentically lean into a culture that represents all the values I appreciate for a good life.
- Meet so many gorgeous and generous people I would not usually encounter in life.
- Keep my mind curious, active and supple.
- Laugh at my own mistakes – there have been plenty.
- Hold true to my desire that in this lifetime I will be fluent.
- Drive my family crazy when I speak to myself in Italian at home, or anywhere.
In this lifetime I will master a second language. It makes me a better writer in English. And perhaps one day, an accomplished writer in Italian as well.
So onwards I go, because there are moments when I think first in Italian, or something just magically drops in that makes it all so exquisitely pleasurable. I will find the nuance. Or perhaps it will find me.
(I’ll be in Comiso 3.12.24-14.1.25)
Chi cerca, trova. Whoever seeks, finds.
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