von Christine Burgmer | Sep. 21, 2026 | Sparks |
Ms, Mrs or Miss, and why you don’t need to know Before you sent a two-line email, you went looking for clues. Mrs or Miss. Her LinkedIn photo was not helping. It’s a small thing that stops you for a minute. Getting it wrong feels rude, and there’s no...
von Christine Burgmer | Sep. 18, 2026 | Sparks |
Sorry, can I just jump in here? Interrupting in English. It’s not rude. It’s a doorbell. The English ring it first. „Sorry, can I just jump in here?“ Nobody is actually sorry. It’s a polite noise that means „I am about to speak...
von Christine Burgmer | Sep. 17, 2026 | Sparks |
More vocabulary won’t fix this You knew the word. You used it an hour ago, in the car, with nobody watching. Then someone asks you a question and the room goes quiet in that particular way. You reach for the word. It’s half a second late. Nobody notices....
von Christine Burgmer | Sep. 15, 2026 | Sparks |
We bought a paper map We got lost on our bikes in northern Germany a few weeks ago. Not properly lost. Just not entirely sure where we were. My children would have used an app. We had a paper map, so we took several wrong turns. We stopped, looked, guessed, turned...
von Christine Burgmer | Sep. 14, 2026 | Sparks |
Dear or Hi, and the three minutes in between The email was finished. Then you went back to the top and changed “Hi” to “Dear”. Then back again. What you’re weighing up in that moment is how you’ll come across. Too casual and you...
von Christine Burgmer | Sep. 10, 2026 | Sparks |
Yes, „zeitgeist“ is an English word. It might sound very German. That’s because it is. But you’ll also find zeitgeist in English dictionaries. It means „the spirit of the time“ or „the spirit of an age“. In other words,...
