Inspire Lecture - Modern Foreign Languages

On Friday lunchtime, I attended the Inspire Lecture. There, a Linguistics Professor from the University of Kent spoke to us about the importance of languages at A-Level and degree level.

We discussed the effects some languages have on others and the key differences from English. For example, the sentence structure in Welsh is quite different. Instead of saying ‘She was a famous singer.’, one would say ‘A famous singer she was.’

We also learnt about how some languages have words that we don’t have. In French, Spanish and Italian, there is no word for shallow. These languages use ‘a bit deep’ instead.

This lecture was illuminating and emphasised the differences between many languages. It also highlighted how languages ‘borrow’ from others. As technology adapts and evolves, many languages simply use the English word rather than creating their own. In French, emails and bulldozer are the same as in English.

Sophie, Y10