“Left for Rome” or “left to Rome”? The unforgivable mistakes that don’t exist.

Last week, during an Italian conversation lesson, my student Barbara made a small grammar mistake.

Ieri sera mia figlia è partita a Roma.

Honestly? I hadn’t even noticed. I was too absorbed in the story. Barbara noticed, though. She stopped mid-sentence and looked mortified.

“I said ‘partita a Roma‘ instead of ‘partita per Roma‘ — after all these years, that’s an unforgivable mistake.”

In that moment I said two things to her.

The first was: congratulations for using the word “imperdonabile” (unforgivable), that’s a genuinely elegant and advanced choice.

The second was: but why do you think getting a preposition wrong is unforgivable?

I do understand her, to be honest. I’m someone who hates making mistakes when speaking a foreign language. I started learning English as a child and I still make plenty of errors. I started learning Polish at university, almost twenty years ago, I lived in Poland, I use it every day… and I still make mistakes.

Does it bother me? Yes, of course. But I’ve learned something important along the way.

There are no unforgivable mistakes when we speak a foreign language.

Because speaking in a language we didn’t learn as children is always a slightly unnatural thing for our brains to do. It takes real concentration, and sometimes we get things wrong. That’s just how it works.

As long as the people around us understand what we’re trying to say, a grammar mistake is not the end of the world. Communication is the real goal.

Barbara has been studying with me for years. We talk about art, books, politics, but also about her children, her worries about work, the small frustrations of everyday life. If you can do all of that in Italian, getting a preposition wrong every now and then really isn’t a problem.

This doesn’t mean we should stop caring about speaking well. It means that first and foremost, we have to actually speak. Only when we speak without fear of making mistakes can we truly improve.

Unforgivable mistakes don’t exist.

If you’d like to speak Italian without the fear of making mistakes, write to me or directly book a free meeting to talk about that. That’s exactly what Tanto per parlare is here for.