“It enriches your mind in every way”: the fight to keep German learning in Britain | Languages

When Londoner Amber Tallon began learning German at the age of 12, “she immediately found it fluent,” she says.

A high school diploma in language and modules in German at Oxford University, where she studied history, helped the now 30-year-old get her “dream job”: She works as a Blue Badge Guide in London, where she offers many tours in German.

“We English people get such a bad reputation because we don't learn languages ​​and assume everyone speaks English. I think it's just polite to learn at least the basics of the language… it puts you on the right track,” she says.

She volunteers a few of her favorite German compound words to illustrate “what a creative language this is… the essence of the matter summed up in a single word.”

“Chocolate side,” which literally means a person’s good side, and “cable salad” are two of her favorites, both of which are a reference to American humorist Mark Twain, who wrote in 1880 that learning the “art of German” was like assembling a collection of “alphabet processions.”

Caroline Wyatt, a BBC presenter who began her long career as a foreign correspondent in Berlin in the early 1990s thanks to her knowledge of German, says learning German has “really enriched my life as a human being”.

“It takes away the fear … because thanks to the language you think: 'I can understand this place.'”

When she got a job as a business correspondent for the BBC World Service in Berlin in 1993, in her mid-20s, she remembers being “perfectly happy” to “pack a suitcase in the back of a car, drive to Harwich, get on a ferry and drive to Berlin before the satnav worked. It's not that it wasn't scary, but it just felt like the world was opening up.”

Tallon and Wyatt are a rarity these days, with the number of students opting to take German in 2024 standing at just 2,261. German enrolments have more than halved in the last decade, there is a growing shortage of German teachers (not helped by Brexit) and some colleges are considering closing their German departments.

This decline has prompted a wider community of Germanists, including diplomats and a few politicians, to look for creative ways to prevent the German language from ending up on the academic scrap heap.

Next month, the Association for German Studies in Great Britain and Ireland will meet for its 92nd annual conference, hosted by the Department of German at the University of Leeds, to discuss the future of language study.

One of the keynote speakers, the German Ambassador to the UK, Miguel Berger, together with the Goethe-Institut and the German Promotion Programme of the British Department of Education (DoE) is behind the initiative “Making the Case for German” – a joint project with the British Council to revive language teaching in state primary and secondary schools in the UK. The project was launched under the last government and all participants hope that it will also be adopted by the new government.

Berger says the aim is to “make German a more popular choice for language learners in the UK again”.

Andrea Pfeil, language consultant at the Goethe Institute for Northwest Europe, says that language skills are still in demand in the British job market. “German is the most sought-after foreign language there… especially since Brexit.”

Knowledge of German is more attractive to employers than the ability to speak German, says Pfeil. “Applicants with a high school diploma have a real All setting features (unique selling point) because they demonstrate a level of competence that gives them better access to the labour market.

“This is something that parents are often initially more interested in than students. This also applies to the fact that Britons with German language skills can study in Germany, where there are generally no tuition fees, which is a huge advantage.”

Pfeil believes that learning the German language could flourish in the long term if more people became aware of its benefits.

The Goethe-Institut, in collaboration with the DoE, has also enlisted the talents of Axel Scheffler, the UK-based German illustrator of The Gruffalo and other Julia Donaldson characters, in the hope of increasing enthusiasm for learning German in primary schools and encouraging progress in secondary schools and beyond. Scheffler has produced illustrations for a series of stories about an alien arriving in Germany, with the aim of encouraging interest in the language.

“The earlier you start, the better, obviously. And learning foreign languages ​​is particularly important in this country, especially after Brexit, which I think has made Britain even more isolated from the rest of Europe,” says Scheffler. “As someone who is bilingual myself and lives in another language, I think that any other language enriches the mind, increases opportunities in life in every way and encourages openness to other cultures.”

German stand-up comedian Henning Wehn, who came to Britain over 20 years ago speaking barely any English and who King Charles recently credited with giving us “an understanding of German idiosyncrasies”, says learning a language is crucial to “broadening your horizons”. But he also believes all the lessons in the world cannot replace immersion in the country itself.

“You only really learn the language when you live in the country… you become part of the fabric. Google Translate is no substitute for making connections, for understanding the jokes or Only Fools and Horses.”