Tag Archives: culture

Word Nerd: 5 Exciting Words You Must Know This December

30 Nov

Image via GIPHY Whether you’re thinking of writing Christmas wishes or just keen to learn more about the most festive season of this year – we’ve got you covered with this exciting list. From Christmas monsters to spongey desserts, this list has it all (and none of them is Santa’s famous laugh). 1. Krampus: Well, […]

Check out these four spooky podcasts for scary season

28 Oct

For Halloween, we bring you four podcasts that will help set the atmosphere for this season. You can get your fill of urban legends and ancient myth or find out the truth to historical legends without any of the gory images that accompany a televised adaptation. Enjoy! 1. Myths and Legends: Hands down one of […]

Word Nerd: 4 cool figures of speech that you must use

20 Aug

Figures of speech or rhetorical devices help us create drama in language and call for attention. Are you familiar with the four that we’ve listed here?

Are you a serious word nerd? Here are 7 signs that give it away

12 Aug

BrainGain Magazine started this Word Nerd series in March 2016. Since then we’ve written about Americanisms, the secrets to writing a good sentence, to best way to insult someone, accents, and other oddities of this common language we speak. For this edition, we thought about the series itself, and its name. We thought too about […]

Word Nerd: Halloween Special

29 Oct

Halloween has become an iconic celebration up there with Valentine’s Day and Christmas Eve (I thought more people would be scared by ghosts, goblins and Heidi Klum’s Kali … No? Just me? Alright then). But where did all of it come from – Marvel heroes roaming the streets with Elsa, Anna and the sheeted ghosts? […]

5 top things I did at Boston University (other than studying)

6 Dec

Boston University graduation

Of course, academics are a central feature of the college experience, but they are not, and should not, be limited by it. The whole college experience is a holistic one. It would be a waste of an opportunity if one focuses on studies alone and not the range of activities that college has to offer. […]

“I wouldn’t change my study abroad experience for any other”: The story of a German student in France

1 May

Anke Wright at a tour organized by her company. Anke Wright is a German whose life has an interesting French twist. She chose to learn French, and later study in France, when most of her classmates were choosing to learn English and flocking to Anglophone countries. Anke went on to marry a Frenchman and start […]

Word Nerd: 5 English words that owe their cool factor to hip-hop

16 Mar

By Anandamayee Singh In 2018, rapper Kendrick Lamar won a Pulitzer Prize for his album DAMN. At 31, Lamar became the first hip-hop artist to win a Pulitzer in a category normally overrun by classical composers. His win came fifty years after the explosion of hip-hop in the streets of Bronx, making it, more than […]

7 posh French phrases that are now popular in English

8 Oct

Author: Pratibha Alagh What if we told you English belongs to same language family as Dutch – Germanic, but that it has more features in common with French, an offspring of the Romance languages? Strange, right? But, when it comes to languages, it’s not all about the roots. What is at play is another very […]

Film Review: Lady Bird is funny, sensitive and real

5 Mar

Winner of the 75th Golden Globe Award for Best Musical or Comedy Motion Picture, and nominated for an Oscar , Lady Bird is the coming-of-age tale of a teenager who dreams big but is fenced in by a strong mother. The movie marks the directorial debut of actress Greta Gerwig, who has previously starred in […]