3 faces of realtà

By Sigrid Lee

Let's look at 3 ways the cognate realtà is used in Italian. Two of these are relatively easy to grasp.

La realtà

The most common way to use the noun la realtà is when it means "[the] reality."

E poi, con il blocco totale in casa, lì è stata [sic: stato] il vero confronto con la realtà, della serie "noi dobbiamo organizzarci qui, in questo spazio che abbiamo".

And then, with the total lockdown at home, in that case, it was about really facing reality, like, "We have to get organized here, in this space we have."

Captions 45-48, Fuori era primavera Viaggio nell'Italia del lockdown - Part 5
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Giada aveva completamente perso il senso della realtà, non erano solo i barbiturici il problema.

Giada had completely lost her sense of reality, the barbiturates were not the only problem.

Captions 68-69, Il Commissario Manara S1EP10 - Un morto di troppo - Part 3
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In English, we often leave out the article, but in Italian, we leave it in. With or without the article, the meaning is clear.

In realtà

The other very common way to use realtà is when we say in realtà, which we can translate literally as "in reality" but in English, we'd more likely say, "actually."

Massimo, senti, io in realtà sono venuta per un altro motivo.

Massimo, listen, I actually came for another reason.

Caption 54, Il Commissario Manara S1EP8 - Morte di un buttero - Part 8
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Here too, we can easily understand what in realtà means.

Una realtà

But there is another way Italians use realtà, and it is to indicate something that exists. It's a bit trickier to translate because it is a very wide-ranging word and doesn't have a single English equivalent. We've listed some possible translations, but there may be more. The important thing is to understand the sense of it when you hear or see it being used.

In a recent episode of La linea verticale, a patient is thinking about the hierarchy of the hospital personnel, as he is being wheeled through the halls to the operating room.

Come in quasi tutte le realtà professionali di questo Paese, anche in un ospedale la rabbia viene scaricata sempre verticalmente...

As in almost all the professional organizations of this country, in a hospital, too, anger is always unloaded vertically...

Captions 1-3, La linea verticale EP 2 - Part 3
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We could also use other nouns, such as "the entities," "the institutions," "the situations," or even "environments." This use might be difficult to wrap our heads around, but we can recognize it because of the context and also what words it is or isn't surrounded by. We won't find the preposition in before it, and we might likely see an indefinite article or a plural article or adjective as in our example above, and in the following ones.

Si andava dall'Alemagna o dal Motta, due realtà che oggi non esistono più.

One would go to Alemagna or to Motta, two enterprises which today no longer exist.

Captions 10-11, L'arte della cucina La Prima Identitá - Part 14
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La cucina contadina, eh, è una realtà culturale molto forte, nella tradizione del nostro Paese.

Country cooking, uh, is a very strong cultural presence in the tradition of our country.

Captions 1-2, L'arte della cucina Terre d'Acqua - Part 13
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We hope that, even though it's hard to grasp, you have been able to learn a new meaning for the noun realtà.

Topics Cognates Nouns Vocabulary

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