Dr. phil. Franziska Mosthaf

Are the Beatles to blame for my falling in love with the English language? In any case, as a completely anglophile teenager, I decided to attend an English boarding school to perfect my English. Later, I studied English literature, art history and economics at the universities of Tübingen (Germany), Durham (England), Cologne (Germany) and finally Rochester (New York, USA), where I received my master of arts.

Martha Randy

If "words" had been a flavor of baby food, I would have begun eating them while still in my high chair. Growing up in the state of New York, I devoured anything in written form, from jam jar labels to the German newsletters my parents received. Later, if I wasn’t busy creating stories, I was correcting print errors in restaurant menus. The English language, however, just didn't have enough words for my taste.

I then returned to Germany, where I completed a Ph.D. in English literature. A change of scene ensued: I moved to Belfast (Northern Ireland), where I worked for a direct marketing agency as its client accounts director for a few years. On the sidelines of both my studies and my job, I worked as a freelance journalist, copyeditor, reviewer and translator. I eventually found my way back to Germany, first to Cologne and then to Augsburg, near Munich. In the spring of 2007, the Wortschleife opened its doors, thereby transforming my love of English into my job – with the occasional Beatles song still playing in the background.

Soon I was studying foreign languages – starting with a summer in Northern Germany, then during a year of high school in French-speaking Switzerland and another year abroad split between the Instituto de Estudios Europeos (Salamanca, Spain) and the Institut d'Etudes Européennes (Nantes, France). After graduating from the University of Rochester (New York, USA), I moved to Cologne, Germany, where I spent five years working as a freelance language instructor, translator and copyeditor. The following eight years saw me living near Paris, France, and today I am settled back on my native side of the Atlantic in Montreal, Canada, where I assure the multiple-time-zone coverage of the Wortschleife. Every day, I put my love of language to work while simultaneously fulfilling that childhood passion of mine – and I'm definitely never left hungry for words!