Some thoughts on language learning, and 5 great Italian phrases which don't exist in English

Recently, an odd thing happened which made me think about the complexities of learning a foreign language. I was writing a scene, and I wanted to use the wordsfondare,meaning to break through something in a particular way, for instance dropping a heavy anchor through ice or breaking a bucket by filling it with too much water. The problem was, the word was in the wrong language. And when I thought about it, I couldn't find an English equivalent. In the end I went back, filled the gap with '[to...