Tag: language

If I’d heard the word “Paris” before July this year, I’d have thought of the Eiffel Tower, croissants, nice coffee, cultured, attractive people, and enough cheese, bread and wine to make any Tesco aisle look poorly and scarcely stocked. Or maybe world-renowned art galleries with original masterpieces dating back centuries. Or King Louis XIV’s monumental […]

Image credit: Facebook Yotam Vaknin is from Israel pursuing his MSc in Physics. One evening during my second week at Oxford, my flatmate explained to me how to read the little pictures on the stove that illustrates to which stove each switch is connected to. You might expect that getting accepted to Oxford would suggest I am […]

Image credit: Pixabay Evalena is a visiting student from New York reading English. This is my first year at Oxford and the longest time I’ve spent in the UK. So, as a disclaimer, I have had admittedly limited exposure to Oxford’s particular words and their meanings. But by asking British students to explain what they mean, […]

International communication has always been an issue in discussions of the future of the human race, but the situation is now becoming a crisis. A large amount of responsibility and hope is placed in the hands of the UN and the EU, and particularly with the recent threats of nuclear attack made by Donald Trump […]

The Erasmus Programme turns 30 this year, but its future in the UK is in doubt. With no concrete assurances from the government that it will continue to participate in the programme after Brexit, students and academics alike are concerned that the scheme will soon be a thing of the past. Hal Churchman, just back from an Erasmus year […]

On the 1st of October, Catalonia – one of Spain’s richest regions – had a referendum. It was quickly declared as ‘unconstitutional’ by Constitutional Court of Spain since the country’s 1978 Constitution affirms the ‘unity of the state’ – but this is hardly surprising. What is surprising, however, is that despite the initial excitement and commotion that it inspired, the referendum does […]

James Haskell, England International and Lions rugby player, sits down for an interview.  He starts talking about Richie McCaw, the most capped All Black of all time and twice world cup winner; “Apparently, at the start of every day, he writes ‘start again’ in his diary…”  He sits back and considers this, looking perplexed, “I […]

It seems a sad indictment on society’s approach to mental illnesses that only on the 18th of December were mentally ill teenagers no longer allowed to be detained in police cells. Yet this is just one of many issues, when the very way in which we speak about mental health is often problematic. The fact that […]

Feminism. On the surface, such an innocuous word, fighting for gender equality- who could argue with that? Words evolve in their definitions, as the classic examples of ‘literally’, ‘like’ and ‘sick’ demonstrate. Yet, in recent years the word, the concept and the activists themselves have been the targets of increasing suspicion and in some cases, […]