Hit-parade of foreign words in Italian
May 30th, 2009 | By Letizia | Category: English
"La hit-parade delle preferenze", "essere giunti al top", "viaggiare in business class": these are only a few examples, from the daily press, of a new Italian way of expression. This shows a trend: many foreign words, above all English and French words have been catching on the Italian language for a long time. Some of those words have been now accepted in the Italian language (design, management, film, happy hour, baby sitter, weekend, etc...) some others are really new and mainly belong to the IT and the business registers (marketing, HR, business administration, etc...). These words may also be adapted into Italian, in this case they represent the so-called neologisms in the Italian language. The following are some examples:
proattivo, from English word proactive, improperly used in the meaning of willing to propose;
promozionare, from English word to promote although Italian has an Italian translation for the verb to promote (which is promuovere);
confidenzialità, which doesn´t exist in Italian but has been used in the meaning of confidential (riservato is the proper Italian translation);
educazione, improperly used in the meaning of education instead of the right Italian word formazione;
domestico, which means related to the household, but has been used in the sense of national;
compagnia, as a translation for the English word company instead of the existing Italian translations azienda and impresa
More than that Italians love to adapt the pronunciation of foreign words and use them to create new original expressions that once adapted are really difficult to recognize!
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