nessundorma: not necessarily 'shouldn't go,' but cmt gently advised against it.

i think rosieuk will be fine, though. plenty of people have made good points. Also, Le Marche is slowly becoming a more involved part of the tourist circle, and lately there is the same "buy a farmhouse and fix it up" mania that overtook Tuscany in the last years. (scary, isn't it?)

Tourist shows up at a small town in Arkansas. Pulls into a gas station.

Says to two guys sitting out front, "Parlez vous anglais"?

Both guys shake their heads.

"Sprechen Sie Deutsch"?

ditto

"Hablo Espagnol"?

Ditto

"你说中国人吗"？

Ditto

Tourist drives off in disgust.

One yokel says to the other, "Y'all think we oughter learn a furrin langage"?

"Why? He speaks four and no one can unnerstand him".

(In my part of Arkansas, it is becoming increasingly necessary to hablar espanol. I can't get the tilde to post.)

Rosieuk, just grab a Pimsleur and learn some phrases- you will feel more comfortable and those CDs make it easy. I took a beginning Italian class which was great for pronounciation. The teacher was from Abruzzo. )However, again- I am living in Arkansas, born and reared in the South so I am sure my pronunciation is horrific. ) I have learned as much from Pimsleur as I did in class.

Diane

No, because I only ever go to the Dolomites where I can get away with using German.

Harzer

funny one, ira. it reminds me of this mark twain quote:

"In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language."

This reminds me of my favorite language story. I was in Italy in 1966, when my high school Latin wasn't too many years behind me. We needed to communicate with a parking lot attendant who was obviously trying to tell us something urgent.

A couple of young men came up and tried to help, but we couldn't find a common language. Finally, one of them asked if we understood Latin. I said I did, and they told us in Latin that the parking lot turned into a market at 7:00 a. m. and that we needed to get our car out then.

Rosieuk, in addition to learning a few words and common phrases, if you have a medical condition, food allergy, etc., I suggest learning how to say that condition or concern in the language of the country you are visiting. If not say it, then at least have it with you written on a paper in that language.

I posted a quick trip report the day after we returned form our trip to Italy and, among other adventures, I told about my recent "First Aid" (ER) experience in Venice. I can speak a little Italian but understand it far better than I am able to speak, and I had a lot of trouble trying to communicate my problem to the men on duty that night.

Have a wonderful trip!

We were in Le Marche last October and had no problems at all. I speak a little Italian, badly, and that got us by in the few places where we didn't find an English speaker.

What I have generally found, and it was true in Pesaro and Urbino, it that I always ask 'parla inglese?' and when met with a response of 'no' and I start to speak my miserable Italian they admit to speaking 'a little' english and we get by.

If you're not gifted in language, I suggest you buy one of those stupid little berlitz books and you'll do fine. Don't postpone your trip to learn some Italian; the best way to learn a language is to practice it and it will be a lot easier to do that in Italy than in the USA.

If there's a college or junior college near you, you may be able to take a quick course. We did and found it helpful.

Had a wonderful week in Le Marche, like so many said we got by without any problem - in one restaurant there was no menu and the staff spoke no English at all and so we had what was put in front of us and very nice it was too, even though we didn't know what we were getting! Beautiful part of Italy, so unspoilt (at the moment) but like someone said the "refurb/renovation" brigade is already starting to move into this area, what a shame.

Thanks for letting us know how it turned out, rosie.

Glad you had a good time.

saving for info on Le Marche.

>Is not speaking Italian a problem? <

Only if you live there, and even then it isn't that difficult if you speak English.