English Sentence
It hardly ever rains here.
Is it just coincidence that difícilmente is the literal translation of hardly?
It hardly ever rains here.
Is it just coincidence that difícilmente is the literal translation of hardly?
difícilmente is borrowed from Latin difficilis, while hard comes from Middle English hard, from Old English heard, from Proto-West Germanic *hard(ī), from Proto-Germanic *harduz, from Proto-Indo-European *kort-ús, from *kret- (“strong, powerful”).
So, I suppose your average English peasant would have been faced with the choice between trying to pronounce difficult-ly or hard-ly.
I’m wondering whether the translator misunderstood “hardly ever” or deliberately made this choice, instead of “rara vez”, or the like.