Coffee and tea

La durezza dell’acqua reads straight across, and so does its first half: hard water is acqua dura. Then the opposite of it refuses to. Soft water in Italian is acqua dolce, sweet water, and the machine that makes it is l’addolcitore, the sweetener. Nothing is being sweetened. Dolce in Italian covers the whole idea of gentleness, of an edge taken off, which is why a slope, a climate and a light can all be dolce without any sugar in sight. The consequence for a reader is that one Italian adjective is doing the work of two English ones. Acqua dolce is soft water, low in calcium, the kind that keeps a boiler alive; and acqua dolce is also fresh water, the water of rivers and lakes, where English says « fresh » and never « soft ». Un pesce d’acqua dolce is a freshwater fish, not a fish out of a softened tap. Only what dolce is set against tells the two apart: dura beside a kettle, salata beside the sea.