What are some examples of false friends in Italian that can be particularly tricky

Some particularly tricky examples of false friends in Italian — words that seem similar to English but have different meanings — include:

• “Attualmente” which looks like “actually” but means “currently.”
• “Eventualmente” that seems to mean “eventually” but actually means “possibly.”
• “Camera” which resembles “camera” but means “room.”
• “Fattoria” which looks like “factory” but means “farm.”
• “Libreria” which looks like “library” but means “bookstore.”
• “Preservativo” appears like “preservative” but actually means “condom.”
• “Sensibile” looks like “sensible” but means “sensitive.”
• “Sensible” in English means reasonable or practical, but “sensibile” in Italian means emotionally sensitive.

These false friends can be especially confusing for learners because the words look or sound similar to English words but have quite different meanings in Italian, leading to misunderstandings if taken at face value.

References

• Some examples from a corpus investigation of potentially confusing polysemy and false friends in the terminology of music, centred on English and French, with equivalents in five other languages

• Italian False Friends

• Pedro J. Chamizo-Domínguez. 2007. Semantics and pragmatics of false friends . New York/London: Routledge. Pp. 186. US $125.00 (hardcover).

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

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