We were off to meet some friends for lunch. It was a beautiful day for a drive through the wine country with the cute little town Radda in Chianti as one of our landmarks along the way. After about an hour into the trip, it became apparent that we had missed our turnoff, so we wheeled the car around and headed back, thinking it must be just a short distance down the road and we would soon be back on track.

After at least ten more minutes of twisting and turning, we realized that we were in fact lost—one of those tough admissions, but it seemed to be true. We spied a building and pulled into a rather curious-looking gas station, which unfortunately appeared to be abandoned. But, to our pleasant surprise there was a friendly woman standing just around the side. I pulled close and poked my head out the window and asked, “dov’e Radda, where is Rah-dah?” She walked over to the driver’s side window with this dull blank stare and said, “Comè, What?”

I repeated the simple name with increased focus on enunciation and clarity, mumbling to myself, “It seems to me that a local would surely know the name of the towns close by.” Then Cheryl leaned over toward the window and weighed in with her rendition of Radda. which, by the way, I thought was exceptionally well executed. Still, our Italian communications had created nothing but apparent bewilderment. “C’mon,” I said to myself impatiently, “it’s not like we’re going for anything tough here like Tuscaloosa or Minneapolis—this is just simple Radda for Pete’s sake (or Pietro’s sake in Italy).

Then it dawned on us: We were unwittingly embroiled in our first real encounter with the dreaded double consonant phenomenon. It seems that the correct pronunciation is Rahd-dah, not Rah-dah. The 2 D’s have to be clearly heard. Now how subtle is that? Even after she said it back to us, honestly we couldn’t really tell the difference. She pointed in the direction of the town we were looking for and we were on our way. At that point, even though we just learned a valuable lesson, we didn’t really care what she wanted to call it. We just wanted to get there in time for lunch.