Related to my previous post: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/23/reality-check-britain-speak-learn-languages-gcse
I think it's a huge shame a modern language is no longer mandatory at GCSE. My kids were not opposed to learning one but had so few options after all the mandatory subjects that they didn't have space 😢.
#ModernLanguages

In France, using my rudimentary French, which I think has turned out to be possibly the most useful of my GCSEs!

Things I have never done outside of an educational setting:

* Differentiated anything
* Calculated the molecular weight of anything
* Analysed a poem for hidden meaning…

Things I have done recently, in French:

* Found out what time the bread shop opens
* Described a medical condition and obtained medicine
* Ordered coffee/beer (of course!)

🇫🇷 #French #ModernLanguages #GCSE

Yesterday Goldsmiths
Today Kent
Tomorrow - watch your backs

#MassacreOfTheHumanities #UniversityFunding #PhilistinePolitics #KentUniversity
#Music #Anthropolgy #HealthAndSocialCare #journalism #artHistory #ComparativeLiterature #EnglishLanguage #Linguistics #ModernLanguages #Philosophy #religion #ethics

UCU members at the University of Aberdeen have voted for strike action over plans to end single-honours degrees in modern languages and put 30 staff at risk of redundancy.

In their ballot, 80% of those who voted backed strike action on a turnout of 60%.

The local branch will meet over the coming days to consider its next steps.

https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/13454/Aberdeen-University-staff-overwhelmingly-back-industrial-action-in-row-over-modern-languages-cuts-and-job-losses?utm_source=Mastodon&utm_medium=Social&campaign=HE

#UCU #HigherEducation #UKHE #ModernLanguages

The University of #Aberdeen is planning to scrap modern #language degrees, including #Gaelic. Please sign this #petition. https://www.change.org/p/save-language-translation-interpreting-degrees-at-the-university-of-aberdeen #UniversityOfAberdeen #AberdeenUniversity #languages #ModernLanguages #Gaidhlig #Scotland #ScottishEducation #ScottishCulture

Well, they went and did it. Vile shortsighted vultures.

Despite National Pushback, West Virginia Will Cut Faculty, Programs

A month of intense public and on-campus pressure did not dissuade the Board of Governors from siding with the administration to slash programs and positions.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/shared-governance/2023/09/15/despite-national-pushback-wvu-will-cut-faculty

#WVU #HigherEd #ModernLanguages #Gee

Re-sharing for the weekend crowd. The official link to our lovely #OpenAccess collection, 'Minoritised Languages and Travel' in the Modern Languages Open journal.

https://modernlanguagesopen.org/collections/minoritised-languages-and-travel

This is a collection of 5 essays + introduction that explore frictions between traveller and travelee as well as the inherent instability of social, cultural and language hierarchies.

#TravelWriting #ModernLanguages #Romantodons #MinorityLanguages #MinorityCulture #Tourism #History #Travelguide #Diary #Wales #Ireland #Germany #France #Spain #Catalonia #Caribbean #DerekWalcott #Poetry

@academicchatter @histodons

As promised, here's now the official link to our lovely collection, 'Minoritised Languages and Travel' in Modern Languages Open.

Kathryn Walchester explores the silencing of the Welsh travelee. A century and a half later, Marija Bergam locates Derek Walcott as a writer of a minor literature in the sense of Deleuze and Guattari. Anna-Lou Dijkstra’s analysis of recent German and French guidebooks to #Wales uncovers how they pre-emptively interpret the travel destination, resulting in often skewed perceptions of a minoritized culture. Eimear Kennedy’s analysis of Irish travelogues about India explores how travelogues composed in endangered languages can originate from a position of relative socio-cultural privilege. Finally, David Miranda-Barreiro undertakes a close reading of Julio Camba’s travel writings and also in past and contemporary critical academic work on the author.

#TravelWriting #ModernLanguages #OpenAccess #Romantodons @academicchatter @histodons

https://modernlanguagesopen.org/collections/minoritised-languages-and-travel

This leaves me with just my own #introduction to the whole special issue.

Abstract
This introduction to the MLO special issue “Minoritised Languages and Travel” provides an overview of the pieces in this collection in context with historical travel accounts in German about nineteenth-century Wales.

Happy reading, y'alls. (For convenience, I will later post the link to the complete bundle.)

#TravelWriting #ModernLanguages #Romantodons #Victorian #Wales #Germany #Hungary #WomensWriting

@histodons @academicchatter @historikerinnen https://modernlanguagesopen.org/articles/10.3828/mlo.v0i0.472

The fourth article is
“A language of wet stones and mists”: The Caribbean Poet as a Traveller in Wales and England
by Marija Bergam Pellicani

Abstract
This article examines Derek Walcott’s “travel poems” about Wales and England from the collections The Fortunate Traveller (1981) and Midsummer (1984) through the prism of Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of littérature mineure. [...] In their engagement with the Welsh and English “Elsewhere” these poems ultimately participate in transvaluation of the relationship between centre and periphery, a dynamics that marked the most significant Anglophone literary currents in the second part of the twentieth century.

#TravelWriting #Wales #England #Caribbean #DerekWalcott #ModernLanguages #Poetry #OpenAccess

@histodons @academicchatter
https://modernlanguagesopen.org/articles/10.3828/mlo.v0i0.198

The third article is
A “Devolved Minority”: Contemporary German and French Guidebook Perspectives of Wales
by Anna-Lou Dijkstra

Abstract
Guidebooks play an important role in increasing the visibility of a nation, as they introduce the country to potential visitors and create images prior to travelling. However, they also tend to reinforce stereotypes and create “romantic fictions” (Mahn 2008). This article examines the representation of Wales in French and German guidebooks and consequently elucidates the cultural and political recognition of Wales in these continental texts. The depiction of Wales as a distinct entity on an administrative, or rather on a cultural and linguistic level will be discussed, as well as the commonalities and differences between French and German views.

#TravelWriting #Wales #France #Germany #Guidebooks #ModernLanguages #OpenAccess
@histodons @academicchatter

https://modernlanguagesopen.org/articles/10.3828/mlo.v0i0.203

Next up we have
Money Matters: Encounter and Economic Disparity in Irish-language Travel Narratives
by Eimear Kennedy

Abstract
[...] By looking at the travel writing of four Irish-language writers – Alex Hijmans, Manchán Magan, Gabriel Rosenstock and Cathal Ó Searcaigh – this article explores the encounters between Irish-language travel writers and foreign peoples and cultures. It investigates the attempts made by these writers to distance themselves from cultural, political and economic hegemony of Western powers but also highlights the often ambivalent positioning of Irish-language travel writers and demonstrates the barriers to encounter and the asymmetrical power structures that economic inequality can create.

#TravelWriting #Ireland #ModernLanguages #OpenAccess

@histodons @academicchatter

https://modernlanguagesopen.org/articles/10.3828/mlo.v0i0.202

At last, it's publication day for the 'Minoritised Languages and Travel' special collection in the Modern Languages Open journal edited with an intro by yours truly -- and all available Open Access.

Allow me to share each paper in this thread as they get published one by one.

First up,
“Everything Remains the Same”: Julio Camba Travelling Spain
by David Miranda-Barreiro

Abstract
In the first decades of the twentieth century, the Madrid-based Galician journalist Julio Camba (1882–1962) acquired long-lasting fame as a travel writer thanks to his foreign chronicles published in the Spanish press and subsequently compiled in a series of volumes. [...] Drawing on studies on state nationalism (Billig 1995) and Spanish nationalism (Taibo 2014, Delgado 2014) this article examines not only Camba’s own views but the response from contemporary scholarship to his texts.

https://modernlanguagesopen.org/articles/10.3828/mlo.v0i0.199

#TravelWriting #Spain #Catalonia #ModernLanguages #OpenAccess @histodons @academicchatter

@ottocrat The visible proof o the deliberate destruction o #ModernLanguages in the curriculum an in chief the eradication o German teaching, tae prepare the way tae Brexit.