False Friends

I was supposed to be going to bed an hour ago, but was just having a leaf through the Lonely Planet guide to wind down before turning in. We’re planning a trip to Modena in mid-May to check out some of the car-related sights - Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, De Tomaso… are all based in the Modena area. So, obviously, rather than wind-down, I’ve ended up opening the laptop and have been poking around an assortment of websites about all sorts of interesting-sounding little museums.

Quite a few of the museums can be visited only by appointment, which has introduced me to my latest false friend - richiesta.

A false friend is a word that sounds like an easy translation from one language to the other, but which isn’t what you’d expect. For example, stufa doesn’t mean stuffed, it means stove.

So when it says “le visite alla Fabbrica Maserati sono possibili su richiesta” it doesn’t mean that “visits to the Maserati factory are only possible for the richest”, it actually means that visits are only “by request”.