Reflections on My 39 Years in Umbria

I feel the need to clarify my entry on False Friends. Beyond the similar spelling aspects, there is the even more complicated aspect of similar words with entirely different meanings. How many of us who struggled with Italian confused at first words like "argument" thinking it meant "argomento" instead of "discussione" or "comprehensive" thinking it meant "comprensivo" instead of "esauriente" or "confidence" thinking it meant "confidenza" instead of "fiducia"? Or, worse yet, how about the English "sensibile" which would CERTAINLY seem to be the Italian "sensibile" but actually means "sensato"...or "preservative" which is a "conservante" and not a "condom". This confusion is always lurking, always ready to creep into our English conversations and writings I bet all of you bilinguals can think of plenty of those incidents and remember some very embarrassing moments. Never will I forget congratulating a new male franchiser on his new "gestazione" (pregnancy) instead of his "gestione" (management of the store)! Tackling the Italian language also means tackling the gender issue, not the broader social issue of gender which Rebecca has so aptly addressed, but the down-to-earth-linguistic difference between male and female nouns. But there is enough on that to warrant another entry... I would love to hear of some of your "magic moments" of embarrassing confusion between some of your False Friends. I'm sure we all have way too many of those kinds of "friends", a kind we could certainly do without!