Mainz!

I HAVE FOUND a degree course where, even as a mother-tongue English-speaker, I could spend the entire three years studying BA German in a quaint historical town in Germany.

The idea of possibly having to move city in the UK to study a language spoken only a few hundred miles across the water always did strike me as bizarre. If you want to learn German, go to Germany!


The course is called Translation with Cultural Studies (Translations-, Sprach und Kulturwissenschaft) at the Johannes Gutenberg Universität in Mainz. Instead of spending three years reading great literature (which would be very nice, but a huge indulgence; also the amount of reading required on a literature course is momentous) ~ I would study German as my main foreign language (the so-called B language; English, as my mother-tongue would be the A language). The goal being to be able to translate into and out of the B language with near mother-tongue fluency. I would then pick a C language (French), which would be brought up to “excellent passive fluency” ~ ie you translate out of French into German and English (but never vice-versa). There’s also an option to do a D language, in which case I would pick Dutch. As y’all can see from yesterday’s post, Dutch stands midway between German and English on the dialect continuum, so it’s not particularly difficult to pick up.


I don’t know any UK institution where I could learn German, French and Dutch all together. People have always queried why Dutch? Even a student of BA Norwegian expressed astonishment at this Wunsch of mine. Dutch-Flemish has over 24 million speakers in the EU (plus six million more in South Africa as Afrikaans), which is far more than all the Scandinavian languages put together. Looking at the map, French and German form a massive block of central Europe, and Dutch fills in the gap both geographically and linguistically. Dutch is the closest major relative to English, which is a cross between French and Germanic. So the four languages tie together nicely. See: there is some method to my madness! I just think it’s amazing I finally found a course where I can do everything I want in the right location. (I’ve always wanted to do German in Germany but until I found this course it didn’t seem possible.)


I’ve posted up some pictures of Mainz, a mediaeval town on the banks of the Rhine in Western Germany, about a hundred miles from France, Luxemburg and Belgium.

Named after Johannes Gutenberg, the father of modern printing, the university was established in 1477. It now has 34,000 students and is unusual among ancient universities in offering nearly all its facilities on a single campus. Most mediaeval universities in Europe are scattered across various sites in town.


If I want to get on this course I’m going to have to bring my German up to scratch massively. My fluency has improved since I read the Christiane F memoir. Dictionary in hand, I copied every single word I wasn’t entirely sure of into a thick notebook along with its translation and when this seemed laborious I told myself this is how countless people across the world have learned English...

I’ve reached a point now, where I’m starting to be able to use German practically, which is the whole point of learning a foreign language, surely. I can read German-language websites. It took long enough to get here. But I’ve a way to go before I’m ready for this course...

I would actually get a vocational qualification. I would be qualified to do something at long last!

Link: “German in Germany” at Mainz University.


Illustrated top to bottom left-right-left-right: panorama view of town and university; university main foyer; Roman Catholic cathedral; white statue; regional parliament; a tower ~ my ideal home; tudor buildings in Kirschgarten