Re: French proverb : “A man who knows two languages is worth two men.” --- is this really a French proverb ?

Peter Moylan wrote:

On 09/06/24 11:56, jerryfriedman wrote:

Peter Moylan wrote:

Once, when I was a child, I was left to wait in the local priest's
living room while my parents had business with him. I saw that he
had a "Learn Italian" record,

>
Was he expecting a significant promotion?

Not much chance of that. In fact he might have been the one who, years
later, was convicted of molesting altar boys. (I too was an altar boy,
but apparently not attractive enough, so I didn't know what was going
on.)

Our town had a lot of post-war immigrants, and Italians were in the
majority. The younger ones quickly learnt English, but many of their
parents never did.

Ah, makes perfect sense.

The only time I was in Italy I had a more practical approach. I had
 purchased a bus ticket at the railway station, but when I came out
of the station I couldn't see any sign for a bus. So I approached a
small group of men, held out my ticket, and said "Dov'è?". One of
them pointed to the ground and said "Qui." Perfect communication!

>
And without any risk of your Italian being overestimated.  But are
you sure you didn't say "Dove"?

I'm not sure how I learnt that word, but I did know that it had two
syllables.

What word?  As far as I know, Italian "dove" is pronounced exactly
like "Dov'è".

As a student at Melbourne University, I was living right next to an
Italian-speaking area, so I picked up a few Italian words by osmosis.
In
fact I needed some of those words for shopping. The shop doors said "Si
parle inglese", but they lied.

That's remarkable.  They couldn't hire somebody, maybe a younger
family member, who spoke English?
Also an "English spoken here" sign would have been more convincing.
--
Jerry Friedman