When I was a child, I would always look forward to Saturday mornings, as that was the day I’d receive a dollar from my dad to put towards whatever toy I was hankering after at the time. In Italian, the word for pocket money or allowance is paghetta (feminine, plural: paghette).
Paghetta is the diminutive form of paga which means salary, pay or wages.
Some parents give their children a paghetta in exchange for doing simple household chores (faccende di casa), while others consider it a way to teach the child how to save and manage soldi (money).
I miei genitori mi danno la paghetta ogni settimana.
My parents give me pocket money every week.
One possible (albeit far less common) synonym for paghetta is mancetta (the diminutive form of mancia = tip, gratuity).
Heather Broster is a graduate with honours in linguistics from the University of Western Ontario. She is an aspiring polyglot, proficient in English and Italian, as well as Japanese, Welsh, and French to varying degrees of fluency. Originally from Toronto, Heather has resided in various countries, notably Italy for a period of six years. Her primary focus lies in the fields of language acquisition, education, and bilingual instruction.
