I feel that I haven’t mentioned it a lot on here recently, but languages are a huge interest of mine. Although a natural monolingual, having a Turkish dad means I was subtly exposed to an unknown language that perplexed me as a child. Nowadays, languages make up a large chunk of my daily projects in my French degree that I hope will carry over into my future career. This fails to mention the fact that everyone’s brains, even monolinguals’, use language!
Since coming to uni, and especially in the past year, I’ve observed how my relationship with languages has changed. In short, I was once fascinated by the idea of learning as many languages as possible, but I’ve now accepted that this may not be realistic or necessarily beneficial. I’ve also started to embrace the cultural side of languages, which I never prioritised at the start. This post will take you through a timeline of my life, marked by my particular relationship with languages at that point.
Growing up
For some context, my dad went to an English-speaking school in Turkey and has lived in the UK since 1996, so his English is very good. When my mum first met my dad, she briefly lived in Marmaris but didn’t pick up the language since it’s such a touristy area. Even now, we can both say a few words but not much beyond this.
As a child, I used to ask my dad questions like, “Do you think in English or Turkish?”, because I couldn’t fathom knowing another language besides English. I used to love telling people that I was Turkish despite not knowing a word of the language. My mum tells me now that his long work days meant he had no time to teach me, but I disagree with this. I’ve read stories of parents who exclusively speak their mother tongue with their child, resulting in bilingualism, so it may have worked if my parents had thought of such a system.
My dad once took my brother and I to a Turkish school in Manchester in an effort for us to learn the language. My only memory is copying down pages of Turkish, understanding nothing, and leaving even more confused. I don’t think this is the best way of language exposure for children.
We also went through a few stints of my dad being my Turkish teacher. It would go something like this:
Me: How do you say ‘My name is Ela’ in Turkish?
Baba: Benim adım Ela.
Me: Okay, but how? How do you get to that?
Baba: What do you mean?
Me: Well, how would I say, ‘My brother’s name is Derin’?
Baba: Kardeşimin adı Derin.
Me: Yeah, so I understand that adı probably means name, but why does it have an m at the end when I say my name but not his name?
Baba: It just does. When you say something about yourself, you add m or ım but not for other people.
Me: Okay. So how do I say, ‘your name is Mehmet’?
Baba: Adınız Mehmet
Me: Why does that have z at the end? And why is it only two words?
Baba: That’s just how you say something to someone.
I would then get too frustrated and give up. He was never good at explanations and he’d become equally frustrated with me for lacking the instinctive knowledge. This marked the temporary end of my language learning journey.
Primary school
Spanish was one of my favourite subjects at primary school. We mainly learnt the basics like numbers and days of the week, which little me enjoyed. In year 6, we were assigned pen pals over in Spain, where everyone in the class gave me the letters to translate. I wasn’t fluent by any means, but I could understand more than anyone else in the class. However, I’d say that my skill was overlooked because I was generally bright at school. Music was my real favourite subject, so this received the most attention.
Secondary school
In year 7, I had to study both French and German. German was my new favourite subject and I always achieved high marks in tests. As for French, I was naturally good but I didn’t particularly like it. I was the student that all the smart kids hated; I was fairly apathetic about my studies, did all my homework the night before, yet my grades were good. Part of me hated this too because it’s given me a bit of ‘imposter syndrome’ over the years (i.e. where I feel undeserving of where I am because I didn’t ‘work for it’).
The joys of going to a grammar school meant I had to pick up Latin in year 8. I absolutely hated it, in part because I wasn’t a fan of the teacher. When I look back, I think that Latin is valuable for linguists as it teaches them the structure and origins of languages, which is especially useful for Romance languages. With this being said, I’d rather learn a modern language than a dead one.
We soon had to pick our options for year 9: three languages out of French, German, Spanish and Latin. For some inexplicable reason, I chose the same three that I’d done in year 8. At the start of year 9, I was speaking to a friend in the year above who warned me not to continue Latin and she came with me to change my options. We haven’t spoken for years, but I’m forever grateful for her encouragement.
Remember when I said I didn’t particularly like French? That all changed in year 9 when I had a new French teacher. He made me enjoy French through the interesting stories he’d tell us about his life in France. French overtook German as my favourite subject to the extent that I’d practise French verbs every night. As someone who was lazy when it came to school, it was a shock that I’d found a passion for my studies because of one teacher.
This made me excited not only for my French classes, but also for my other language classes. I realised how much I enjoyed them and I believed I’d found my calling. However, this made my GCSE options quite difficult; I had six options, two of which had to be sciences. I could have theoretically chosen three languages, but this would have meant I’d only have one other option that was neither language nor science.
I had a meeting with my head-of-year, where I argued that I was clearly cut out for languages and I wasn’t planning to pursue a career in sciences anyway, so it’d be pointless for me to do two sciences. Thankfully, she agreed to let me study just one, so my GCSE options were as follows: French, German, Spanish, Chemistry, History and Music.
Languages continued to be my favourite subjects in years 10 and 11. Deciding my A-Level options was even more difficult than at GCSE. I wanted to continue learning three languages, but I’d been warned by people studying one that doing even a single language at A-Level is a lot of work. I wasn’t really passionate about anything else and I didn’t know which ones I’d choose if I had to narrow it down…
College
I took the plunge and continued with all three. Because of my high GCSE results, my college also wanted me to choose a fourth subject. I chose Law as my affinity for arguing led people to think I’d make it a good solicitor. This gave me a backup if I found that studying three languages was too much. Funnily enough, Law was the one I dropped after the first few weeks.
Frankly, I loved college and it was one of my favourite times of life; I was studying exactly what I wanted at a great college, surrounded by a lovely group of friends. Many people thought I was insane for my A-Level options but I didn’t regret my choice. Of course it was hard at certain points, but no more than if I’d chosen anything else. I’d also rather be stressed about something I care about because it’d give me the motivation to power through.
I had to make decisions once again, this time with university. Many unis in the UK allow the study of three languages, but I started to question whether this would be useful. I thought that I’d rather dedicate my time to learning two, as it’d allow me to really master them, over spreading myself thin through learning three. I chose French and German, not because I don’t like Spanish, but because it was my least favourite of the three. German was really my first love from starting secondary school, and French was my second.
University: years one and two
Studying languages at university was nothing like how I expected. In my first year, I had one hour per week of speaking, writing and grammar for each language, as well as a context lecture in English. Considering I had 3 90-minute and one 45-minute class for each language at college, I was expecting uni to be far more intense. I was also baffled that the cultural classes were in English; I envisaged myself doing everything in foreign languages at uni.
I really started to resent the context/culture classes because I believed I’d come to uni to learn languages, yet I was being taught in English! We learnt about the French Revolution and German films, leading me to question, “Why do I have to learn History/Film Studies in a language degree?” People often stress the importance of learning a country’s culture when learning its language, but 18-year-old me found it futile. However, I couldn’t do anything about it, so I begrudgingly got on with it.
Although I still don’t regret my A-Level choices, there was one problem with them that became very apparent when I started uni; I was completely clueless when it came to academic practice. What I mean is I had no idea how to write an essay, find sources, reference, so on and so forth, because I never had to at college. I somehow managed to get a B in my first essay, despite it being the most cringeworthy writing I’ve ever produced.
My attitude towards culture subtly started to shift in second year. We learnt about Sigmund Freud in German context, whom I find fascinating as a feminist. No matter what subject you study, there’s a good chance you’ve come across Freud in some way, and his outdated views on women made me angry. Angry in a productive sense, because it shone a light on my academic passions.
At the end of second year, I had to choose whether I wanted to write a dissertation in my final year. One of the reasons I chose to do a dissertation, was because the alternative was taking two more cultural modules, which would probably result in a similar amount of work anyway. The dissertation also had the advantage that you can choose your exact topic, so I was bound to find it more engaging.
I told the staff that I wanted to base my dissertation on something related to Freud and gender theory. They declined Freud as there was nobody in the department with the expertise, but one of my German teachers suggested some radical feminist writing inspired by Freudian concepts. I came across Elfriede Jelinek, an Austrian author, who fit the bill. Her most famous book is called The Piano Teacher, which I’d recommend only if you’re interested in weird literature!
Something I didn’t mention earlier, was that I also justified studying two languages at uni by saying “I’ll continue to learn Spanish in my own time”, which did not happen. During the Summer after second year, though, I was hit with a sudden burst of motivation to pick it up again, as well as to regularly practise my other two. This only lasted a few months, admittedly, but it taught me that the Spanish is still in my brain — it just needs reactivating.
Year abroad
I thought that Geneva would be the perfect place for the first half of my year abroad since it’s not only the home of the UN, but it’s also in a country where both of my degree languages are spoken. If you’ve read any of my other posts, you’ll know that I regretted this decision as it was the worst time of my life. On the bright side, studying in the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting taught me a lot about the French language, and living in a foreign country allowed me to absorb the local culture. I took two German modules that I quickly dropped since they were far beyond my level.
Since I was then only studying French modules, I was anxious about my level of German. I was supposed to be spending the following term in Austria and my German had become very rusty. In the first two years of my degree, I was also beginning to find advanced German much harder than French, so I was worried that I’d be unable to get by. In a way, I resolved the issue by not completing my year abroad, but this also came with its own problems.
My uni told me that I’d only be allowed to continue with French as I didn’t go to a German-speaking place on my year abroad. I was very disappointed by this because, as I said, German was my first love. Although I found it difficult the longer I learnt it, I joked that it was Stockholm Syndrome and I still adored it. It also meant I had to find a new topic for my dissertation.
I eventually came to terms with the decision. I sometimes found myself overwhelmed at balancing the two because I’d feel unable to study French without dedicating the same time to German, so at least I didn’t need to worry about that anymore. I also knew that many unis accept Master’s students in languages they didn’t study at undergrad, so the door wasn’t necessarily closed on German.
I found a new topic for my dissertation: a French author called Virginie Despentes, who equally writes radical feminist literature. On top of my dissertation, I also had to choose four cultural modules to make up the lost credits from German. I was worried about how much work this would entail, but I reasoned that it’s easier to get a good mark on a well-researched piece of coursework than a German exam since language proficiency requires consistent effort throughout the year. Despite my worries, I knew I had to embrace the reality of final year.
University: final year (now)
I’m still annoyed that I was made to drop German because I don’t think it was my fault that I couldn’t complete my year abroad. However, it may have been a blessing in disguise; the stress of coursework deadlines is less severe than the stress of constantly maintaining two languages. It’s also worked out perfectly because I’ve been accepted for a Master’s in Audiovisual Translation & Localisation with both French and German! My German is still rusty, but I’m going to practise it over Summer to ensure a decent level. What’s more, is that there won’t be any speaking exams on my course, which was my weakest skill in German. Maybe everything does happen for a reason.
My dissertation topic ended up branching out a lot from just Virginie Despentes: it became an exploration of her and Catherine Millet (another French writer) through the lens of Georges Bataille (a French philosopher). It made me fall in love with research and question why I hated learning these things so much in first year! I’ve heard so many stories about the horrors of dissertation writing but I genuinely loved it. My supervisor is trying to persuade me to do a PhD as he can tell I’m a good writer, but I’ll do my Master’s before deciding that.
That brings me to where I am now. This year is my first year of uni where I’ve enjoyed the culture more than the language side of my degree, which has made me less interested in the languages themselves. When I first became a language lover, I’d fantasise about becoming a polyglot and impressing people by knowing ten languages, but I don’t know if I want that anymore. I feel conflicted because I’m not not interested in learning them, but I’m currently more fascinated by research and writing within a multicultural context.
If I could live more than one life, I’d definitely learn more languages. Part of me wants to pick up Spanish again as it’s fairly similar to French anyway, but I need to prioritise German this Summer. If I was to learn a new language, it would be Dutch because I think it sounds cool and it’s very close to German, but it’s all a matter of balancing that alongside my other commitments. I’m also semi-regularly pressured by my dad to learn Turkish, which actually discourages me from wanting to, and it’s a very difficult language for English speakers.
I’ve accepted that my relationship with languages strengthens and weakens, grows and fades, and generally evolves, over time, but they’ll always be important in my life. Even the most avid polyglots don’t practise every language every day, and they may even take hiatuses from practising certain languages. Maybe this will be me in the future, but it’s hard to tell when my academic life revolves around them. Check back with me in five years — maybe I’ll have four languages on the backburner while trying to learn another!
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