“What’s a busman?” Sabine had asked. Her English, always excellent, would occasionally stumble when met with yet another of the language’s eccentricities. Martha would explain the idiom and then invariably follow up by asking for the equivalent in German. Unsurprisingly, there often wasn’t one. Not that German didn’t have its own idiosyncrasies of course. Martha knew that whenever any lexicographer was asked why English failed to have a word for X, Y, or Z, the questioner’s very next comment would be “I bet German does.” And they’d be right. German usually did. Famed for its Lego-like
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