Meet the team

Nadine Hagenow

Nadine spent a carefree and somewhat sheltered childhood on a farm in a tiny village (just 400 inhabitants!) near Leipzig in former East Germany. However, it wasn’t long before she discovered that the world was a lot bigger than she had first been led to believe – her grandfather who lived in West Germany would come to visit, regaling her with stories of fully stocked supermarkets and radio-cassette players, and bringing her presents of bananas and Barbies.

She had always loved languages and, as soon as the wall fell, she occupied herself learning English, French and Russian at secondary school. She knew she wanted to study languages at university, so she first tried her hand at teacher training (yawn) but quickly discovered that (apart from the English and Latin lessons), she didn’t actually find it much fun! So she switched to a translation course with English and Spanish. After spending a year in Barcelona and many more in Leipzig, Nadine graduated and moved to London to work in a small translation and software company as a project manager in June 2007. A few years and two more jobs later (very unusual for a German, we know), Nadine finally found herself at Mother Tongue Writers – where she and her colleague Christian represent “Team Deutschland”.

Motto: If you don’t try, you’ll never know!

Loves: Reading on the long commute from Kent!
Hates: The long commute from Kent every day!

Mother tongue: German
Fluent: English and Spanish
Others: some French (J’pas moi, eeeee!), Russian (ДОСТОПРИМЕЧАТЕЛЬНОСТИ), Italian (Ciao bello!), Catalan (¡Bon dia!) and rusty Latin (In vino veritas)