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In the Collins online Italian dictionary, 'divertente' translates as both 'fun' and 'funny'. So if I say: "era/è stato divertente" do I mean "it was fun" or "it was funny"?

Does it depend entirely on context, i.e. should I use the reflexive verb 'divertirsi' as elaborated on here, e.g. 'mi sono divertito' to mean fun, i.e. literally 'I funned myself' and then 'è stato divertente' to mean 'it was funny?'

Or should I really use 'buffo' for 'funny' and 'divertente' for 'fun'?

santos
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    Could you please rephrase it as a question about Italian? The difference between “fun” and “funny” looks like a question about English. – DaG Oct 16 '17 at 11:11
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    I've re-worded it - thanks. – santos Oct 25 '17 at 07:19

1 Answers1

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On a dictionary, I find that (as adjective, of course) fun means amusing, whereas funny means causing amusement; there are other meanings, but just this suffices to clear up the main difference in English.

In Italian divertente can be both. An example for fun is

a fun evening

and one for funny is

a funny story

In Italian the two phrases can be rendered

una serata divertente
una storia divertente

Something buffo is divertente, but they are not exact synonyms.

egreg
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