Debt and advice

The list opens with essere indebitato, and behind that participle stands a verb English cannot copy: indebitarsi. Italian assembles it in one move — the prefix in-, the noun il debito, a verb ending, and the reflexive that says the change happens to the subject. The mould is productive: innamorarsi from amore, ammalarsi from male, arricchirsi from ricco, impoverirsi from povero. One word then carries the whole change of condition, tense and all: si è indebitato l’anno scorso dates it, si sta indebitando says it is still going on, si era indebitato puts it before something else. English has no such machine. It reaches for a verb of motion or of becoming and adds a preposition — « to get into debt », « to fall into debt », « to run up debts » — and the verb has to be learned phrase by phrase, since « fall » suits debt and love but not wealth. Two things follow on this page. Essere indebitato is the state and indebitarsi is the slide into it, which is the difference the whole list is about. And « indebted » translates neither: in ordinary English it means grateful.