Now that I have finished school, received my A-Level grades, and confirmed my place at University, I have received a long reading list to get me started with the next stage of my academic career. Amongst other things, this list includes a textbook containing extensive lists of German vocabulary. As I was leafing through the book, I couldn’t help but notice how long lots of those words were, especially the nouns. Now, as a student of the language, I’m familiar with the complex, almost agglutinative nature of many German words – a linguistic phenomenon which can be intimidating to many learners at first. However, if you can see past the character count, and begin to see these words as friends rather than enemies, they can be an invaluable aid in communication … Continue reading →

As most people who have been through the UK state school system will know, language learning is, for many, a difficult process. Many adults will remember struggling through French lessons in secondary school, others will remember fighting the urge to fall asleep in a German class. Others still will remember the feeling of achievement after embarrassing their Latin teacher with a question about the number “six” – you know who you are. Nowadays, we as a society are caught in a trap: the younger generations – mine included – are being socialised into the idea that learning foreign languages isn’t as important as it used to be, on the grounds that the internet provides us with easy digital translation software. But is this a reasonable argument? Does Google Translate really mean we don’t need to learn how to greet our fellow humans in their own languages? Can we get away with not understanding the waiter in a Mediterranean restaurant, because “they all speak English anyway”? No. We can’t. And here’s why. Continue reading →