Difícilmente llueve acá.

English Sentence

It hardly ever rains here.

Is it just coincidence that difícilmente is the literal translation of hardly?

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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.

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I’m wondering whether the translator misunderstood “hardly ever” or deliberately made this choice, instead of “rara vez”, or the like.

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