Interesting illustration of the power of the sound of words, regardless of meaning, from someone called David Crystal: “You’re in a spaceship approaching a planet. You’ve been told there are two races on it, one beautiful and friendly to humans, the other unfriendly, ugly and mean-spirited. You also know that one of these groups is called the Lamonians; the other is called the Grataks. Which is which? Most people assume that the Lamonians are the nice guys.”

Brought to mind my own adolescent musings about how Hitler wouldn’t have got very far at Nuremburg if he’d been using English in a Welsh accent, look you, rather than German – surely the most aggressively guttural of all European languages.