#78: False Friends
Dear Nonni,
Last week we had our second parent teacher interview for Raffy. Last time I went on my own as David was in Australia, but this time we were both in attendance. The meeting was conducted entirely in Italian. A great check in for me to see if I've made any progress in the last six months!
David and I are both studying Italian, but with different teachers, using different methods, and on different timelines. This means that there are some things that he understands better than I do, and vice versa.
During the meeting, I realised that there are a lot of false friends between Italian and English when it comes to adjectives, particularly words describing emotions.
I noticed it first when David misunderstood sensibile to mean sensible. Which is, excuse me for this, a sensible guess at the meaning of the word. Groan.
Sensibile actually means sensitive. But it doesn't even really mean sensitive in the sense that we would say someone is sensitive in English, with a bit of a negative connotation. I would say that it's more like perceptive, with regards to the emotions of others. To say that someone is sensibile here is more of a compliment than it would be in Australia.
Same goes for calling someone serio/a. Yes, it means serious. But it is used here as an endorsement of a person’s character. If you are una persona seria, you are reliable, trustworthy and just generally approved as a human. Not that you spend all your time frowning and being no fun.
Another one is emozionata/o. You would think this means emotional. But you would be wrong. It means excited.
Do not, under any circumstances, make the mistake of directly translating exciting into Italian and using it to describe yourself, lest you want to declare your state of arousal to the world.
Annoiata/o doesn't mean annoying, it means boring. Delusione is disappointment. If something is morbido, it is soft - not morbid. Leo in particular is often described as simpatico, which means he is agreeable / likeable, not sympathetic.
The list, I'm sure, goes on and on. But these are the ones I come across often, and I laugh to think how many sentences I must have completely misunderstood when we first moved here at the hands of these false friends.
In any case, the interview was great. Raffy continues to do very well at her school, and her two teachers find her to be (mostly) a pleasure to have in the class.
Leo will start at the same school in September, and we are molto emozionati that he will have the same teachers. As Raffy's class graduates to primaria, her teachers (who have followed her classmates through their three years of kindergarten) will cycle back to the piccoli. This is common practice in many European countries, and I can see how it improves outcomes for young children in their first few years of learning.
Leo is growing up very fast at the moment. He now sleeps in a big bed, having outgrown his cot, and this transition has been remarkably smooth. He loves riding his bike and he is never without at least one toy car in his hand or his pocket.
He loves to sing, especially when he is in the bath at night. Up until now, most of his songs have been nursery rhymes. But in the last few days he has started to sing a remarkably good rendition of the hugely popular Italian song Cuoricini, which you can't go more than three minutes in this country without hearing on a radio, TV ad, or on the speakers in the supermarket.
I'll try and take a recording for Mum to play you. It is quite something.
All my love and hugs,
Kate
