Free university tuition? Yes please!

Lower Saxony has just become the final state in Germany to revert to free tuition.  This is in stark contrast to what is happening in my home country, Australia, where the current government is trying to deregulate university fees.  Fees which are high enough already in my opinion!

No such thing as a synonym?

“There are no such things as synonyms!!”  I still remember how these words from Tom Robbins, in Jitterbug Perfume, grabbed my attention.  I wondered if it was true.  Learning new languages has taught me that it is.  Every language has it’s unique ‘untranslatable’ words.  The most famous Danish example is ‘hygge’.  I have been provided with many translations for this beloved word.  The simplest is ‘cosy’, but that doesn’t do it justice.  My favourite translation is more of a short story.

 

Hygge?

Deutsche Sprache, Schwere Sprache.

German is hard.  That is the title of this post, according to the ‘idioms’ bonus lesson I eagerly unlocked on Duolingo, only to not understand any of it.  As an ignorant English only speaker, I’ve found that the thing I really struggle with learning a new language is that I don’t actually know English grammar.  German, I learned early on, has three genders.  What is a ‘gender’?  In English I only know male and female… Do we have these word genders?  I’ve no idea.