TRACEY BENDINGER | Culture | CONTACT
“Bonjourno,” said Charlotte Simpson-Smith, an Anglo-Saxon Betoota heights woman who just returned back from a two-week stint on the Amalfi Coast, in case you couldn’t already tell.
Charlotte was greeting the half-Italian waiter at one of Betoota’s family-owned Italian restaurants in the French Quarter.
“Ah Grazie Bella, parli Italiano?” questioned the waiter, Fabio, in fluent Italian.
Unable to understand Fabio, Charlotte crumbled into a fit of nervous giggles.
“Hehe [sic] sorry I don’t know what you’re saying, I’ve just spent two weeks in Italy, so I only know a little bit.”
“Ah ok ok, mie scuse Bella. What can I get for you and your beautiful friend?”
“Could we please order garlic bread to start? Grazie mile” finished Charlotte with an unfounded tone of confidence.
Catching up with Charlotte’s monolingual friend after dinner, the Advocate can confirm that not even she was impressed with her friend’s peppered Italian phrases.
“Oh it’s just the pits, like, we know you were just in Italy – you uploaded 50 photos to your Insta story a day”
“Who are you trying to impress with your bullshit Italian?”
“It shits all of us.”
The Advocate understands that with the mid-year holiday season wrapping up, a number of other people around town have returned dropping the odd foreign phrase into everyday conversations; arigato (Japanese for thank you), muchas gracias (Spanish for thank you very much) and even de nada (no worries in Spanish).
More to come.
