All the same, at this stage of the game, it was all quite challenging enough for him. There were some verb conjugations, for example, over which he was perpetually stumbling, particularly the conditional and the imperfect subjunctive. His questions about these often served as starting points for the dialog between teacher and student. At the beginning of each lesson, Giancarlo would patiently explain and re-explain how and when each verb tense should be used. A brief discussion of whatever topic or person a particular article might have addressed usually ensued. Invariably, though, the conversation would move on to other subjects. Be it politics, life in America, art, movies, or even occasionally sports, Carter discovered that there wasn’t much about which Giancarlo did not have an opinion. While carefully guiding the conversation so that it stayed within the confines of Carter’s growing vocabulary, Giancarlo would encourage him to speak about his own opinions. In this way, he made his pupil stretch what he had learned further and further.

Carter enjoyed these talks immensely, and in many ways his lessons became more enjoyable, more relaxed and easygoing. In others ways, however, they became just the opposite, for Giancarlo was becoming more demanding with the passing of every session. In the early days, for instance, he rarely corrected Carter’s pronunciation. What seemed to matter most back then was that Carter recall the appropriate words he needed to speak and that he pronounce them only reasonably well. Now, however, Giancarlo hopped on every error, impatiently tapping his pencil at the sound of the slightest mispronunciation or most minor emphasis on a wrong syllable. It was a bit disconcerting at times, but it gave Carter a greater sense of urgency about his lessons and made him focus that much harder.This disciplined approach bore fruit, and to the continued amazement of his professor (who took care not to reveal it), Carter’s knowledge of the language grew by leaps and bounds.

A source of frustration for Carter, however, was his inability to put his burgeoning language skills to use outside of his lessons. Sometimes he would drive through Federal Hill, a predominantly Italian-American section of Providence, and stop at a bakery or market, hoping he might chance upon someone with whom he could converse. The old neighborhood was changing, though, and he was just as likely to encounter there someone of Hispanic or Asian origin as someone of Italian descent. Even then, on those occasions when he chanced to overhear snippets of conversations in Italian, the words he heard were often completely unintelligible to him.They sounded Italian, but like no Italian he had yet to hear.

“Don’t even try to understand them,” counseled Giancarlo one evening when Carter took the opportunity during a break in his lesson to bring up the subject. “What those people were most likely speaking wasn’t really Italian, but a mishmash of Italian dialects and American English.”

“What sort of dialects?” asked Carter, quite intrigued.