“Vice versa” is a Latin phrase that exists in both Italian and English (thank God!), although pronounced a bit differently! 🙂
I use the phrase in this post as I saw the funniest show on MTV about an Italian guy visiting America for the first time, and he spoke no English. Just a bit like me in regards to the language, only vice versa!
In the show the Italian was accompanied by an American guy who obviously had Italian parents, or had lived in Italy, as he spoke beautiful Italian and perfect English (American!) and had the right accent in both languages. The guys were in their late twenties/early thirties.
It was a riot as the American tried to teach the Italian guy how to order in a drive-thru and say words like “water” and “twenty”, which Americans pronounce very loosely. Every once in a while they would quickly inject out-takes of the Italian guy trying to say these words, too funny.
They traveled all over the country, visiting places that the Italian new from TV, like Beverly Hills/90210, certain cities, baseball parks, etc., and once in a while he would see a low-rider, or a chopper, or something that reminded him of some movie or TV show like “Starsky & Hutch”, “The Dukes of Hazard”, or “The Blues Brothers” that was quite funny as it brought both me and the American guy back to a place we haven’t been to in a while (and they would have an appropriate clip handy!). They also did things like make s’mores, which the Italian couldn’t pronounce either!
Maybe it is a bit of “you had to be there”, but for me it was not only good for a laugh, but made me feel a bit better about my own language skills!
