Why I love living in a multilingual town

‘‘Wir sind nicht in Deutschland, wir sind nicht in Österreich und wir sind nicht in Italien. Wir sind in Südtirol’ (We are not in Germany, we are not in Austria and we are not in Italy. We are in South Tyrol). If I was in any doubt before, this assertion from a resident on my second day in Brixen reminded me that South Tyrol, a German-speaking province in northern Italy, is a little bit different.

Only a few years earlier, in my first year as a German and Italian student at Durham University, I didn’t even know that South Tyrol existed. At that point I was deciding where to go for my year abroad. I was resigned to the tricky task of organising two different placements (one for each language), a task made more complicated by me being a wheelchair user. It was only when a friend pointed to the region on a map, sneakily hidden away in the Dolomites, that it struck me: why go to two different places to improve my German and Italian, when I could stick with just one?

Both my German and Italian tutors responded enthusiastically to the idea of going to South Tyrol. My university friends were equally positive but I also sensed a certain apprehension about spending a year abroad in a multilingual region. The main question was: how do you know which language to speak?

Sitting at the local train station in Brixen as I prepared to begin my year abroad as an English language assistant, I realised this was a valid concern. I heard all the usual announcements apologising for delays and announcing platforms changes. So far, so normal. But there was one crucial difference: every announcement was in both German and Italian. The multilingual signs in the station added to the impression that Brixen suffered from a distinct case of indecisiveness. For a start the town had no fewer than three names: Brixen in German, Bressanone in Italian and Porsenù in Ladin, South Tyrol’s third language.

Moving to a multilingual area like South Tyrol initially feels like playing a game where everyone else knows the rules, apart from you. Things improve with time, however. As Harald Knoflach, a teacher at the school where I work says: “Ninety per cent of the time I can tell someone’s first language before they even start talking.”

Emma Shirley encountered a similar linguistic dilemma. Emma, a Spanish student at Lancaster University who has also studied a Catalan module as part of her course, is currently studying in Girona, where both Spanish and Catalan are widely spoken. She shared my initial uncertainty about which language to speak, but says “Although most people speak to you in Catalan, 99% of people will switch to Spanish if you don’t understand.” This flexibility is also true of South Tyrol. As I drove through the cobbled town centre for the first time in my powered wheelchair, I noticed that “Ciao” and “Buongiorno” were quickly followed by “Hallo” and “Grüß Gott”.

The sights of Brixen are as diverse as its sounds. With restaurants serving schnitzel and shops selling dirdnls (a traditional Alpine dress), you’d be forgiven for seeing Brixen as an Austrian town stranded in a country, to which it doesn’t belong. Look a little closer, however, and the Italian influences on everyday life quickly become apparent. Gratta e vinci lottery scratchcards are sold in every newsagents whilst the local football team plays in the Italian league. Far from hovering uncertainly in a cultural and linguistic no-man’s land, Brixen manages an impressive balancing act.

This balancing act is in fact between not two but three languages. Deciding that just sticking to German and Italian would be far too straightforward, I decided to acquaint myself with Ladin. Ladin is a language with five variants across the Dolomite valleys alone and is spoken by around 30,000 people across the province. Mercifully, my beginner’s course has stuck with learning just one, for now at least.

Whilst trying to learn a language that has nothing to do with my degree might seem like an unnecessary distraction, it has been useful on many levels. As well as noticing some similarities between Ladin and Italian, I’ve also found it interesting from a cultural point of view. Doing a Ladin course as an English-speaker has acted as a great conversation starter and people really appreciate that I’m taking an interest in a different aspect of South Tyrol’s culture.

As for the languages I’m studying for my degree, although there have been some difficulties with tuning into the local dialects of German and Italian, I’m convinced that encountering two foreign languages every day has helped my confidence. Switching from German to Italian will hopefully feel easier in my final year at university as it’s a normal part of life here.

Spending my year abroad in a multilingual region has taught me something else too. When I started my degree, I thought of German and Italian as two separate languages that rarely crossed over. Brixen, with roads called via Dante and Goethestraße and shops selling La Repubblica next to Die Zeit, is a living example that this is not the case.

In fact, if I was a town I’d probably be Brixen. We both stubbornly refuse to commit to one language. Far from being an unnecessary complication, Brixen’s indecisiveness has helped to keep my final year options open at a time when I might have had to plump for one language over the other. When I graduate from Durham in 18 months, my degree won’t be called German and Italian but modern languages. It might not have been Durham’s intention but the subtle change in title seems to reflect my multilingual experience rather nicely. Instead of giving me a watered down version of two languages, South Tyrol offers me a more diverse impression of both.