Wildlife management

The eleventh entry is il sistema di indennizzo, and the noun that opens it is a quiet trap, because the word an English reader recognises is the narrow one. Il sistema does mean a system, and a compensation scheme is exactly that. But the verb the language built on it has walked a long way from anything systematic, and it is now one of the busiest verbs in ordinary Italian. Sistemare i libri is to put the books straight; sistemare una pratica is to sort a matter out; far sistemare il tetto is to have the roof mended. Said of a person it means finding them a place in the world — hanno sistemato il figlio in banca — and in the reflexive, si è sistemato, it is settling down, with a job, a flat and often a marriage. From the same verb comes la sistemazione, which on a booking form means nothing more than the accommodation. So one stem covers what English divides between « tidy », « sort out », « mend », « settle » and « accommodation », and of the whole family only il sistema keeps the sense that looked familiar.