Caveman Italian

For all the time that we've been in Italy, we have been learning a
good deal of Italian. Only recently however, have we realized exactly
how uncivilized we must sound to the natives here. An example would be
today when we were taking the marina shuttle into town, when my dad was
calling a taxi driver asking whether he could drive us to the train
station from the marina next Thursday at five in the morning. This is a
literal translation of what he said. "Good morning, is possible train
station seventeen December? Yes, marina. Five morning. Thank you."
This may sound a bit like a caveman who happened to need to get to the
train station on Thursday, and that's probably what it sounded like to
the taxi driver. The problem with our Italian is that we only know
infinitives and present tense. This means that we usually have trouble
getting our point across, except when whoever we happen to be speaking
to knows a little English. It has since become obvious to all of us that
we have quite a ways to go before we can consider ourselves conversant
in Italian.

-- By Orion