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Il testimone ha torto: la testimonianza è falsa.

Il testimone ha torto: la testimonianza è falsa.
The witness is wrong: the testimony is false.
From Lesson 217:Past reported speech (trapassato prossimo)·Italian

Questions & Answers about Il testimone ha torto: la testimonianza è falsa.

Why does the Italian sentence use ha instead of è for 'is wrong'?
In Italian, being wrong is expressed with the verb avere (to have) in the fixed phrase avere torto (literally 'to have wrong'). Using essere here is a very common mistake for English speakers, but you cannot say è torto.
Is testimone always masculine, or can it be feminine if the witness is a woman?
The noun testimone ends in -e and can be either masculine or feminine depending on the person. If the witness were a woman, it would be la testimone. The ending of the noun itself doesn't change, only the definite article!
Since our current lesson is about backshifting, how would we report 'The witness was wrong' (passato prossimo) in indirect speech?
If the original direct statement was in the passato prossimo (Il testimone ha avuto torto), backshifting rules require us to change it to the trapassato prossimo when reporting it in the past. It would become: Ha detto che il testimone aveva avuto torto (He said that the witness had been wrong).
Why does the word for false end in -a (falsa) rather than -o?
The adjective falsa describes la testimonianza (the testimony). Nouns ending in the suffix -anza are feminine, so the adjective must agree in gender and number, changing from its dictionary form falso to the feminine singular falsa.

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