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The English language contains many words of Latin origin that enriched its vocabulary through the direct contact with French during the Middle Ages. The result of this process is that languages as different as English and Italian can share a number of words deriving from a common Latin root. Sometimes students can take advantage of these similarities and successfully ‘guess’ the meaning of the foreign word, but this is not always the case. As languages are not static systems, but rather continually develop and change, it can happen that words originally derived from a common ‘ancestor’ end up having rather different meanings in different languages, giving rise to what are commonly known as ‘false friends’.
Three famous ‘false friends’ between Italian and English are the adverbs attualmente, eventualmente, and finalmente.
Attualmente looks similar to actually, but it means ‘now’, ‘at the moment’ like in the sentence Attualmente molti studenti studiano italiano/At the moment many students study Italian. The adverb ‘actually’ is best translated in Italian with ‘per la verità’.
Eventualmente looks similar to eventually, but it rather means ‘in case’ like in the sentence Eventualmente ti mando una e-mail/ I will send you an e-mail in case. The adverb ‘eventually’ is best translated in Italian with ‘alla fine’.
Finalmente could remind you of the word finally, but it rather means ‘at last’, like in the sentence Finalmente sei arrivato!/You have arrived at last!. A good transaltion for ‘finally’ is ‘infine’.
These were only three of the most frequent examples, but do not be put off by these linguistic mines, keep on trying to work out meanings and connections between your mother tongue and Italian. Only, pick your friends well!
