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,...
von Christine Burgmer | Sep. 9, 2026 | Sparks |
Why gobstopper and jawbreaker are both still correct Someone uses a different word from yours. And for a second, you wonder if yours has gone out of date. Last week in Hamburg, I was talking to a young man from Britain about school. We got onto sweets. I said...
von Christine Burgmer | Sep. 8, 2026 | Sparks |
Actually? It’s doing you a favour. Actually?It’s not a filler word.It’s a parachute for the three seconds your brain needed to think. I lean on it more than I’d like to admit. I once rewatched a recording of my own training session and lost...
