Last Christmas Eve, I was walking our dog Dahlia through the Italian countryside. We were ambling along only about a mile from our house on the outskirts of Martina Franca, a town in the Puglia region. That’s when I saw Cecilia, an elderly neighbor, behind the gate to her villa, briskly sweeping her piazza with a broom. Within a few minutes, I learned almost everything any of us really need to know about how people from different cultures can successfully communicate with each other. I’d come to know Cecilia from my previous strolls. In our first encounter, her dog had barked at ours, and ours had barked back at hers and we both attempted, albeit in vain, to shush our pets. We then introduced ourselves to each other. But Cecilia spoke only Italian, and I, a freshly minted English-speaking American expatriate, had learned only a smattering of Italian. I’d avidly watched instructional YouTube videos every day for a year straight, memorizing my lessons and practicing my pronunciation. Still, as research shows, the older you are, the harder it is to acquire a new language. Ages 8 to 18 are believed optimal. So at age 70, I was running more than a half century late. Italian ranks as the fifth most popular new language people around the world attempt to learn, according to the educational technology platform Duolingo. In part, this is because Italian is reputed to be a cinch to acquire. The U.S. Foreign Service Institute claims Italian is among the easiest languages for native English speakers to learn. Even so, it requires an estimated 480 hours of practice — equivalent to an hour a day for almost 16 months — to achieve fluency. Granted, I had picked up a vocabulary of no more than a few hundred words and some handy, all-purpose phrases such as “piacere di conoscerti” (“pleased to meet you”). But on a scale of 1 to 10, I rated my proficiency in the Italian language, charitably so, as barely a 2. Now Cecilia and I greeted each other according to the time of day, with a “buongiorno” in the morning, a “buona pomeriggio” in the afternoon and a “buona sera” at dusk. I was pretty strong on salutations and could gesture theatrically with my hands reasonably well, but had little else going for me linguistically. So our conversations seldom advanced much beyond brief exchanges, and our small talk would quickly sputter to a standstill. Ah, but this was no ordinary day. It was Christmas Eve. So I took advantage of the opportunity to wish her “Buon Natale” (“Merry Christmas”). Cecilia wished me the same. We then tried to exchange further holiday pleasantries, but neither of us could understand the other. Luckily, I already knew Cecilia to be an obliging soul, sympathetic to my hapless attempts to exchange sentiments with her in her native tongue. So I started trying to tell her about our family plans for that night — how our daughter (“figlia“) was having my wife (“moglie“) and me over to her home (“casa“) for dinner (“cena“) with our dear toddler granddaughter (“nipotina“). So far so good. Cecilia was grasping my every word, smiling and listening with interest. But the best was yet to come. I told her what we would be eating (“mangiare“) that night. In short order, I recited the names of all the foods to be featured in our feast: orecchiette (“little ears,” a Pugliese pasta specialty), sugo (tomato sauce), bombette (pork rolls stuffed with cheese), croquette (deep-fried balls of meat, fish, rice or potato) and so on. As I ran down the menu, I sang each word liltingly as if performing an aria from an opera, outstretching my arms for theatrical effect to convey the glories of the Italian palate. Cecilia’s smile broadened, her eyes widening. Encouraged by her enthusiasm, I now brought my hand repeatedly to my open mouth to mimic the act of eating. I patted my belly to signal blissful satiety and sighed loudly. “Delizioso!” I exclaimed. By now, we were drunk on our success together. “Vino rosso!” (“Red wine!”) I shouted and tilted my head back, pretending to be gulping some down. Cecilia was clapping her hands in vicarious delight. She and I had achieved the otherwise impossible: We fully understood each other. Somehow the incomprehensible and the uncomprehending had connected. I felt like I’d hit the jackpot on a slot machine in Vegas, setting off that percussive ka-ching, the coins cascading forth with a clatter. In a spontaneous masterstroke, then, I had introduced two topics that spoke eloquently to even the hardest of hearts: family and food. Luckily, I had picked up just enough vocabulary to establish an ecstatic rapport. “That’s it!” I thought. I had hit the lingua franca motherlode! I had serendipitously discovered the ultimate workaround. Ever since that moment — call it nothing short of a Christmas miracle if you’re so inclined — I’ve capitalized on every chance in my drive-by chitchats with Italians to speak fluent family and food. It qualifies in its own right, at least for me, as an entire language unto itself. Now I know. Family and food speak to all of us. Bob Brody, a consultant and essayist living in Italy, is the author of the memoir “Playing Catch with Strangers: A Family Guy (Reluctantly) Comes of Age.” Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email [email protected].