Chewing gum

When I travel abroad I always try to follow local customs and whereever possible speak the local language, or at least try.

When I turned 30 I went to Rome for a week, and one day I decided to go into a local delicatessen and buy some ham and salami, rather than have lunch at another restaurant.
I can do the small numbers and say please and thank you in Italian (or at least I could then, as I had practised), but what is the italian word for 'slice'? Noone spoke a word of English in this little local shop I had found! But in Italy speaking in hand movements is commonly accepted, so I got my 2 slices of ham and 2 slices of salami.

A few years prior to this event I was on a long weekend in the US, as you do. I stopped by a drgstore to purchase some chewing gum. In itself not a difficult task, considering we speak the same language in the UK and the US, or so I thought;
Shopgrl: ...cents
Me: Pardon?
Shopgrl: What?
Me: how much?
Shopgrl (to her colleague): What's she saying?