E, ma, o

Open an Italian dictionary at allora and you will find then, so, well, at that time, in that case. Five glosses, several of them incompatible, and all of them true somewhere. That is the character of this whole group of words: they are less translated than deployed.

They are also the highest-frequency words in the language. The first hundred words of any course are mostly made of them, because the first hundred words of any language are.

The joiners

e is and. o is or. ma is but, and like the English word it warns you that the second half of the sentence is going to undercut the first.

perché does double duty as both why and because, which is a genuine economy: the question and its answer use the same word, and Italian sees no reason to spend two. quindi is therefore, and it is the word an Italian reaches for to signal that a conclusion is coming.

The time words

quando is when. poi is then, in the sense of next. allora is then in the sense of in that case, and also functions as a conversational filler roughly equivalent to the English so at the start of a sentence.

ancora is still, or yet, or again, depending on where it sits. davvero is really, and it is the one an Italian reaches for to sound sincere rather than merely emphatic.

The ones that modify

anche is also. solo is only. mai is never, and it is one of the places Italian keeps a double negative where English will not: after the verb, mai needs non as well (non vado mai, I never go), and leaving it out is wrong rather than emphatic. Before the verb it stands alone (mai visto una cosa simile, mai più!), and in a question it means ever: sei mai stato a Roma?

That double negative is the thing to take away. After the verb, Italian negation is built from two pieces working together, and a learner who drops the non because English does not have it will be understood and will sound consistently odd.