There are a few things that those of us who’ve spent some years acquiring a language realise as we go along. For example, that it’s the everyday things that are usually more difficult to describe than complex political issues: after all, democracy in English gives you démocratie in French, democracia in Spanish and Demokratie in German. But just you try telling a plumber that the seal on the drainpipe below your sink needs changing, along with the washers. That’s when you learn that the German word for rubber seal or gasket is identical to the word for poetry (Dichtung) and that the translation of washer is literally “Mother slice” (Mutterscheibe).