Phonics, with a hint of Transcendentalism

This week I hung out with a guy named after water and pretended to be various parts of nature. For three hours. They tell me it is Phonetics class, but I have a sneaking suspicion it’s all a plot to make 24 girls look very stupid for a ridiculous amount of time. Giuseppe Bevi L’Acua (means drink the water…yeah) is an important actor that teaches acting in Rome. He and the Dante Alighieri school decided us Brigham Young students could use a few lessons from this speaking coach. Apparently, this method is supposed to work miracles. I have yet to wake up and speak impeccable Italian, but I do still have two more lessons for the magic to set in. It was an interesting experience, to say the least. And Giuseppe, while never dangling an Italian participle, has quite a long way to go with the English language. I think the best way for you to understand the kind of confusion and entertainment we experienced for three hours is to give you an example of what we had to listen to.

“Close you eyes not at all. Now follow as I do and birth. Ay in…..ay out. Take a Greek birth. Feel it in you bode-y. Relass you mouth. Relass you tongue. Focus on the birth. Feel the written of you birth. Picture a bland of grass blowing in the wind. Birth the bland of grass. Now take a Greek birth and open you eyes.”

Confused a little? So were we. After a while of trying to figure out how we could possibly focus on our Greek births, we began to understand. Maybe it was some of that linguistic magic taking hold. In case you are still confused about our instructions to birth blands of grass, here’s a translation of Giuseppe’s coaching:

“Close your eyes not all the way, but just enough to let a small slit of light come through. Now do as I do and breath. Air in, air out. Take a great breath. Feel it in your body. Relax your mouth. Relax your tongue. Focus on the breath. Feel the rhythm of your breath. Think of a blade of grass blowing in the wind. Breath the blade of grass. Now take a great breath and open your eyes.”

But before we went all transcendental, we started out with warm ups that could have been mistaken for twelfth century boy’s choir practice. But with a lot more arm movements. For most of this initial warm up we were mainly focusing on trying to hold in great bursts of laughter. We all frantically avoided eye-contact, knowing that if any of us locked eyes it would send us over the edge. Our next task was to stand in a circle, close our eyes, and make our bodies move like a blade of grass blowing in the wind. It was strange at first, but after about fifteen minutes I knew I finally had the hang of things when I actually started photosynthesizing. Somehow, this unnecessarily long exercise helped us pronounce the letter “i.” But we were only half done. The next half of the class moved a little faster. We went from visualizing a big angry storm cloud to making our bodies imitate the sea, getting the letters “u” and “a” down. The whole thing was part religious chant meeting, part yoga class, part meditation session, part choir practice, and part transcendental experience.

So, to sum up, in three hours we learned three sounds and pretended to be various parts of nature. How productive. I still can’t figure out how pretending to be a blade of grass is supposed to help me speak Italian better. But I’ll tell you what, I cannot wait for next class. Who knows what it will hold! Maybe we’ll move on to zoo animals corresponding to Italian consonants!