Many years ago, back when my wife was just my girlfriend and I was visiting her family for the first time in rural Italy, I spoke about as much Italian as a plate of spaghetti Bolognese. Unfortunately, her family spoke as much English as a chicken pot pie, so there were plenty of hilarious misunderstandings.

I tried my best with what little Italian I could muster (mostly just Spanish accented hopefully in Italian) and managed fairly well with her parents. Her grandparents, however, didn't even speak Italian. They spoke Veneto, the local dialect. Adorably, they would ask my then-girlfriend how to say things in Italian—they assumed that I didn't speak Veneto, but surely I spoke Italian, or what would I be doing there? Needless to say, they might as well have been speaking Latin.

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Source: http://blogs.transparent.com/