Electrical engineering and the grid

Die Schaltung is the circuit: the drawing, the board, the way the parts are joined together. Take the word out of the workshop and it changes job. On a bicycle die Schaltung is the gears, and die Kettenschaltung is a derailleur; in a car it is the gearstick and what it does. On the evening news it is the live link: wir schalten nach Brüssel, and if the picture freezes, die Schaltung nach Brüssel is what has failed. English needs three nouns here, circuit, gears and link-up, because it names the result. German names the act underneath all three, schalten: making or changing a connection. So a sentence like die Schaltung ist kaputt needs its context before anyone reaches for a multimeter, a spanner or the phone to the studio. The rest of this list keeps to the electrical sense — the parts, the protection, and the grid behind the socket.