Employment law and the workplace

Il prospetto paga is the monthly pay statement, and the first of its two words is the one that misleads. English hears « prospect » and reaches for the future: what lies ahead, the chances of a thing, a likely customer. Il prospetto does none of that. It is a table, a schedule, a summary set out so that the whole of it can be taken in at one look — un prospetto riassuntivo, il prospetto dei costi — and in the language of buildings it is the elevation, the face a house turns to the street. Both words come down from Latin prospectus, the looking out, from prospicere: English took the looking forward in time, Italian the looking at what is set out in front of the eye. Two consequences worth carrying away. The « prospects » of a job are le prospettive, a separate word on the same root, and non ci sono prospettive is what a disappointed employee says. And the document English does call a prospectus, the one a company issues, is il prospetto informativo — the single place where the two languages meet again.