Feb 24, 2014 - 03:36 PM
The word 'for' has many different uses in English. Your examples use it in two different ways. In the first case it is used to indicate a duration of time: 'for now'. In the second case it is used to indicate the object of an action: 'waiting for a colleague'. Another common use is to indicate an intended recipient or beneficiary: 'a gift for my sister' (un regalo per mia sorella). In the first and third situations, you use 'per'. I think it's the second case that gives English speakers trouble (at least in my case!) In Italian, you don't use 'for' to indicate the object of the action.
As Riff251 stated, some Italian verbs include 'for' in the meaning of the verb. Aspettare doesn't just mean 'to wait', but also 'to wait for'. Cercare means
'to look for'. And the one I mess up the most - pagare can mean 'to pay for'. We have verbs like this in English, too, but they are less common. For example: You would say 'I seek employment', not 'I seek for employment'. But of course, 'I look FOR a job'. Or, 'I await your response' rather than 'I await for your response'. But 'I wait FOR your response'. Actually, there are many verbs in English that don't use 'for' to indicate the object of the action - it is just implied in the verb. Why do we 'buy a gift' but have to 'pay for a gift'? We would never think to say 'buy for a gift'! I imagine a native Italian speaker would feel the same about 'aspetto PER un college".
I think the tricky thing for English speakers learning Italian is to recognized when the 'for' in English is used to indicate the object of an action. Think about the sentence 'I am looking for a gift for my sister'. It contains the phrase 'for a gift' and also 'for my sister'. The object of the action (looking) is 'gift' - that is what is being looked for. 'My sister' is not what is being looked for, but the intended recipient of that object. So you say 'cerco un regalo' (without per), but 'per mia sorella' (with per). Or the sentence 'I waited for a colleague for an hour', which contains 'for a colleague' and also 'for an hour'. The object of the action is 'a colleague'. 'For an hour' indicates a duration of time. So it is 'ho aspettato il mio college' (without per), and 'per un' ora' (with per).
I'm not an expert in Italian - I'm not quite through level 3 - so I don't know if there are verbs in Italian that do use a preposition ('per' or something else) to indicate the object of an action. It might just be easiest to memorize the fact that aspettare translates to 'to wait FOR', etc. But I like to understand the reasoning behind something so I can apply it to other cases in the future.