For any of those studying languages at degree level, you will understand the long hard slog that’s been necessary to get to this point, and you might still feel that there are mountain ranges standing between you and fluency. Most of the time you might be so dejected it’s just […]

English is a curious language with many strange rules that don’t always apply, many odd words and a plethora of words borrowed and looted from other languages. I love words. I love the sound and feel of them. I love finding out where words came from and how they all […]

140 characters for your thoughts: welcome to twitter. Twitter began as a system of mobile phone text messages linking up to a larger internet network. On early mobile phones, 140 characters was the maximum limit allowed for a single text; hence, twitter’s character limit was set at this figure. So surely […]

This is a subject which has been on my mind a lot recently, particularly with the world’s attention currently fixed firmly on the British Isles. It is virtually impossible to miss the words ‘Olympic games’ and ‘Team GB’ which have been splashed across the media for months now. (If you […]

Saunders Lewis is considered one of Wales’s literary heavyweights; his is one of those names that prompt wide eyes, pursed lips and subtle nods of the head. His works are considered to be part of the so-called Welsh Canon –the body of Welsh literature thought to consist of classics that […]

In two hours time I will be sitting very nervously in front of two French university professors and a microphone, armed with an oral essay with a few nifty subjunctives shoved up my sleeve. It’s the first French oral exam that counts since I started at uni, and they really […]