False friends when learning Italian

When learning Italian, one of the challenges that learners often face is dealing with false friends—words that look similar to words in another language (often English) but have different meanings. These false cognates can lead to misunderstandings and errors in communication.

Here are some examples of common Italian false friends:

• Casino: In Italian, casino means a brothel or a mess, whereas in English, it refers to a gambling establishment ⁴.
• Intossicazione: This word means food poisoning in Italian, not intoxication as one might assume from the English word ⁴.
• Burro: In Italian, burro means butter, while in Spanish (another Romance language), it means donkey ².
• Attualmente: In Italian, this means currently or presently, not actually as it might be interpreted by English speakers.
• Sensibile: In Italian, this translates to sensitive, not sensible as in English.
• Fattoria: This word means farm in Italian, whereas it might be confused with factory in English.

These examples illustrate how false friends can lead to amusing or confusing situations if not properly understood. To effectively learn and use Italian, it is important for learners to be aware of these pitfalls and study them carefully. Resources like specialized dictionaries or language courses that focus on these differences can be very helpful in overcoming these challenges ⁴.

References

• True friends are hard to find: A machine‐assisted investigation of false, true and just plain unreliable ‘friends’

• 1. Presentation Genes and Languages 1

• False Cognates and Friends between English and Kurdish

• Italian False Friends

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