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Dieci anni fa, un gadget simile era difficilmente immaginabile.

Dieci anni fa, un gadget simile era difficilmente immaginabile.
Ten years ago, a similar gadget was hardly imaginable.
From Lesson 340:Adjectives of possibility (-bile)·Italian

Questions & Answers about Dieci anni fa, un gadget simile era difficilmente immaginabile.

How exactly is the adjective immaginabile formed from the verb immaginare?
You drop the final -re from the infinitive immaginare (to imagine) and add the suffix -bile. Because it's an -are verb, the vowel stays an 'a', creating -abile. Verbs ending in -ere or -ire usually take -ibile instead (like credere becoming credibile). It works exactly like the English "-able" or "-ible", meaning "capable of being imagined".
The translation says "hardly". Can I use difficilmente anytime I want to say "hardly" in English?
Not quite. Difficilmente literally means "with difficulty" or "unlikely". Here, difficilmente immaginabile translates nicely to "hardly imaginable" because it describes the high level of difficulty in imagining it. However, if "hardly" means "barely" in English (e.g., "I hardly slept"), you cannot use difficilmente. You would instead use words like appena or a stento.
Why use un gadget simile instead of just saying un gadget come questo?
While un gadget come questo (a gadget like this) is grammatically correct, un gadget simile (a similar gadget / such a gadget) sounds much more natural and elegant in Italian when referring to a broad category of things. Also, if you place the adjective before the noun (un simile gadget), it adds a bit more dramatic emphasis, closer to "such a gadget!".
Gadget is an English word. How do I know its gender, and how would I make it plural?
In Italian, foreign loanwords that end in a consonant are almost always masculine, which is why it takes un here. Furthermore, they are invariable, meaning the noun itself doesn't change in the plural. To say "similar gadgets," you only change the article and the adjective: dei gadget simili.

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