BIBEK GURUNG: You grow up with the sense that if your first language, or one of your first languages, Singlish, actually a bad version of an already existing language, you kind of get this sense that “I'm just bad at language,” which is… language is a fundamental human skill. It's what separates us from the lemurs or whatever. And to just have this sense that you're bad at this very fundamental skill, I think, really does a number to your self esteem and your abilities to communicate in general. I still have a lot of - I don't know how to phrase it, maybe like cultural cringe - around Singlish. And when I meet someone from Singapore, we do sort of lapse into Singlish and communicate in that way, except if I'm with American friends and then I just feel so self conscious and I'm not able to do it. As a student of linguistics and someone who just knows about the sociolinguistic dynamics, I still find it really hard to shake.

ÉTIENNE ROEDER: There are some words that still exist. There are some expressions you could still tell that these people that the people come from the East or the West. For example, in the Western part, they say ‘Plastik’, and in the Eastern part, I would say they say ‘Plaste’ because there was a company in the East - there was actually just one company in the East that produced plastics and that was called Plaste und Elaste, and because of that, all the people would call plastics ‘Plaste’. And you you could still tell today if someone says ‘Plaste’ and instead of ‘Plastik’ that this person is probably from the Eastern part.

ESTHER-MIRIAM WAGNER: ‘Plastetüte’ - plastic bag. I mean I remember going to school with a plastic bag and being sent home because it was a West German bag. This was a very precious item - you would keep a ‘Plastetüte’ for months and you would reuse it and reuse it and reuse it until it was just tatters. That was a precious object.

MATTHIAS EINHOFF: My son, when he tries to identify if someone is coming from a West German or East German family, he asks them how they call the thing that you put your bathroom things in: East Germans say ‘Waschtasche’ and West Germans say ‘Kulturbeutel’. And that’s the ultimate identifier whether you come from a East or West German family.