One of the somewhat variable things about my time in Italy has been the way people have interacted with me as an American student. In the above picture from a class day trip to Pompeii, I look like a pretty stereotypical tourist. Unsurprisingly, wearing shorts plus a t-shirt and hat with American sports teams’ logos will immediately brand you as a tourist. When I was dressed like this, vendors, waiters, and pretty much everyone I encountered spoke to me in English, which was fortunate because my command of the Italian language is more or less limited to greetings and the names of various pasta dishes. I tried to avoid dressing like this when possible, since I did not want to attract attention. However, on some days it was simply unavoidable, such as when we visited Pompeii, which is a notoriously hot and shadeless site.
However, the days when I was dressed more ambiguously (sundresses, capris, sunglasses, etc.), I experienced quite a variety of interactions. I’d say that about half the time, people pegged me as a tourist, but the other half, people assumed I was Italian and began speaking in Italian to me (spoiler alert: I usually didn’t understand it).This was especially true if I was wearing sunglasses, since my blue eyes were hidden. When that happened, I usually tried to use the smattering of Italian I knew, intermixed with English. If that failed, I used Spanish, which I’ve been studying and speaking for years. Interestingly enough, people were more inclined to help me if I spoke Spanish to them, which is why I began using Spanish instead of English during my last few days in Rome.
This led to a few interesting observations. One, while a good number of Romans do speak some degree of English, knowing at least basic Italian (more than just hello and goodbye) is very helpful, especially when taking day trips away from the city to less touristy destinations. Two, there was a discernible difference in how people treated me depending on which non-Italian language I spoke. While speaking English, people seemed to care less about fulfilling my breakfast order at the cafe and tried to cheat me when paying for a lunch with friends, making other purchases, or navigating the train station. But when I spoke Spanish, which most Romans did not seem to speak fluently, people were much more courteous and patient, and they did not attempt to cheat me once, even though I was still in areas with a lot of tourists and was clearly not Italian.
I’m not quite sure what to chalk these experiences up to: a general loathing of American tourists, the fact that Italian and Spanish have some similar cognates, or that Italians assumed I was a Spaniard and thus a fellow European. Either way, it was rather eye-opening to see that choosing between non-native languages could play such an influential role in how tourists are treated in Italy.
