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, the ideas, values and attitudes that shape a particular period.

For example:

“The rise of remote work reflects the zeitgeist of the 2020s.”

Or:

“Sustainability has become part of today’s zeitgeist.”

Sometimes English borrows a word because it captures an idea so well that no single English word does the job.

Zeitgeist is one of those words.

Quick win: The next time you come across a familiar-looking English word, don’t assume it’s “just German“.

It might already be part of English.

💬 Can you think of another German word that English has adopted?

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 And for a second, you wonder if yours has gone out of date.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 “gobstopper.” He said “jawbreaker.”*

For a moment, I wondered if my English had aged without me noticing.

It hadn’t.

Gobstopper is British. Jawbreaker is American. Both are still used. Neither of us was wrong.

This happens more often than you think. Someone uses a different word, and you quietly assume yours is the outdated one.

Often, it’s just from the other side of the Atlantic.

So keep your word.

Next time someone uses a different one, try: “Oh, we say X.”

You’re adding another way to say it. You’re not correcting yourself.

Ever dropped a word because someone else used a different one?

*A gobstopper/jawbreaker is a large, hard boiled sweet that you keep in your mouth and suck for ages. It gradually gets smaller as the layers dissolve, revealing different colours and sometimes different flavours.

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 count before the ten-minute mark.

Here’s what nobody tells you about “actually.” It’s not sloppy. It’s stalling with style, buying you the half-second you actually needed. Professionals use it constantly, without anyone blinking.

Quick win: Next time “actually” slips out, let it stay. It bought you a second. That’s its whole job.

(Oh, there are more than three “actuallys” in this Spark. I did not plan that. Actually, I might have.)

Nervous in English?
You don’t slow down.
You speed up, as if you’re trying to outrun your own sentence.

It happens to me too, just in my second language. Ask anyone who’s heard me answer a surprise question in German in front of a large audience (forty-five seconds, several new words invented, none of them real).

Here’s the strange part. Going faster doesn’t make you sound more fluent. It just removes the pauses that would have made you sound calm.

Slowing down isn’t a weakness. It’s giving your sentence room breathe, instead of throwing it and hoping.

Quick win: Next time you feel yourself speeding up, take one breath before the sentence starts, not halfway through it. One sentence, one breath, no sprint.

“Where is he?” someone asked after a colleague missed a call.

“He’s in the home office,” came the reply. Everyone understood he was working remotely.

But in English, “home office” usually sounds like a room in your house. It creates an image of someone sitting at a desk in a private office at home.

German uses “Homeoffice” differently. It describes the whole work setup. English usually focuses on the activity instead. We say, “He’s working from home.”

The meaning was clear. The phrase just pointed people towards a different picture.