I’ve studied languages all throughout my educational career. In year 4, during Topic lesson,
we learnt some basic French. I thought it sounded ugly, but I liked the videos of the French
teenagers having fun together at the fair, and I liked the little songs teaching us how to say
hello and goodbye and how are you.
Until I started my GCSEs, I had to take French and Spanish. I found them both quite difficult;
pronouncing foreign words in front of other people made me go all shy and although it was
fun to picture myself in a café in Madrid ordering a cheese sandwich, I would look out of the
window at the grey field and think about all the years I had left until I could leave school.
I finally started to take a proper interest in Spanish when I carried on with it in year 10. I
could speak in actual sentences by that point, and I liked to flick through my stapled-together
vocab booklet sat on the floor by the lockers in the morning. I decided I wanted to do well.
A-Level was more daunting. I was in a class with a lot of confident people and speaking
exams made me want to cry.
In December of 2019 we went on an exchange trip to Palma, Mallorca. I was well outside of
my comfort zone and quite horrified when my partner suggested we share her bed (she ended
up sleeping on her parents’ floor. Sorry Ingrid). It turned out in the end to be a magical week.
There were golden lights hung above every street and a new Harry Styles album for 16-year-
old me to enjoy and a girl I was temporarily infatuated with who I managed to brokenly
compliment in her language.
It pretty much solidified the fact that I wanted to continue to study Spanish at university. I
took, for one term, American and Latin American Studies before dropping out, having
reached a linguistic plateau I felt I could only overcome by moving abroad one day. I am in
my final year of a Philosophy BA now, but I saved money working as a trolley dolly on trains
and then went to volunteer in a hostel in Chile for 2 months in 2023. I’ll go to my grave
grateful for that experience—it genuinely changed my life.
One of my best friends is from Berlin. I’d never really wanted to learn German before I met
her and watched on in admiration as she code-switched effortlessly in conversation with her
friends from international school. I decided that since I had the option in Philosophy to take
subsidiary modules, I would start beginners’ German at the University of Nottingham’s
language centre. I thought I might as well take advantage of its being there; paying for
language classes post-graduation didn’t sound too appealing, and, well, it was fun to feel like
I was in year 8 again.
My German is somewhere between GCSE- and A-Level level now. The modules are quite a
lot of work for them only being 10 credits a term, but the tutors are lovely, the course is well-
structured and, honestly, the lessons are a breath of fresh air. I notice my progress every time
I go back to Berlin. Sometimes I still make my friend order my food for me—my social
anxiety hasn’t magically disappeared with age—but I can understand the news and signs and
what plans are being discussed for the night.
I hope that one day I’ll be able to call myself properly multilingual. They feed into one
another, experiencing and appreciating other cultures and language-learning. It’s hard to have
one without the other.
Modern foreign languages in the UK are under-studied and under-funded. It’s well-
understood that, if you are someone who has English as your mother tongue, you will be
accommodated for when you travel. And you can’t blame people for their ignorance when we
exist in a society that is increasingly neglecting the arts and humanities. Sadly, UoN has
recently announced it will be scrapping MFL degrees (among many others), due to financial
constraints.
I attended a small demonstration on campus last week and the speaker actually struggled to
articulate the importance of these subjects. I don’t blame her. Silence and silencing have been
reoccurring themes in lots of my modules this term. I’m not a very superstitious person but I
have a bit of a pattern-finding brain, and when I’m studying the sociological implications of
being able (or unable) to put into words your life experiences due to your position and
resources, alongside witnessing what appears to be a crisis of education in my country, the
parallels don’t escape me.
This floating around in my head is what prompted this little ode to languages. I will always
advocate for studying them if you are able to. They are, at their core, communication tools;
they help us to understand one another, to respect one another, and to find the words in a
world set on taking them from us. Perhaps I would have complained if I’d have been forced
to learn French from the ages of 5-11. But, now, at 22, my favourite film is French, I listen to
quite a bit of French music, and—for the record—I don’t still think it sounds ugly.