Newsletter from the Hymers College MFL Department • Issue 1
Previous Speakers at the Language and Culture Club Have you heard about the language and culture club? Extremely interesting speakers talk each week about their cultures and experiences with languages. It’s fascinating to hear from such a wide range of cultures such as Russia, Hungary, and many more. Our previous speakers were:
Eszti Pontone
Wafaa Elghoroury
Eszti, born in Hungary, has been living in England since the age of 16 after receiving an incredible opportunity in 1995, to study in England for one year in Sixth Form. She started learning English at the age of 6 and luckily, she was one of the ten students from Hungary who were granted the scholarship. Eszti gave us a whistle-stop tour of Hungary’s history, discussing its rather turbulent history, having been invaded many times and eventually losing over 2/3rds of its territory at the Treaty of Trianon. Eszti spoke about her life with languages and how English has provided her with so many opportunities which have completely shaped her life! It was fascinating to hear another’s view on the importance of languages within society and her life individually!
Wafaa spoke about her life growing up in Egypt, being exposed to languages from a very young age! As she attended a British school in Egypt, she had the opportunities to learn English and French as well as the many other languages her parents spoke, such as the Egyptian and Libyan dialects. It was extremely intriguing to see how her drive to learn languages shaped her life and how she was able to gain fluency in different languages through reading travel, literature and watching films. Wafaa was able to break down the stereotype(s) of ‘learning languages is too difficult’, ‘why bother learning any more if you can speak English’, her advice being that selfteaching a new language is possible, especially through media such as books, films and music.
Nina Koshy
Giuseppe Mazzarelli
Nina is an old Hymerian, attending Hymers college a few years ago and is now studying languages at St Andrews University. She spoke about the rewarding experience she has had so far with studying languages (Spanish, Arabic, and Italian) and it was the perfect opportunity for sixth formers or those in younger years to ask her any burning questions! Many of our members are interested in studying languages at university and beyond, so it was very beneficial to have that student perspective and understand how speaking a range of languages can improve your skills, professionally and culturally! ‘One of the many things I love about languages is how much they can say about the people who use it.’
Giuseppe’s parents are Russian and Italian, allowing him to have grown up in a bilingual home. Not only has this provided him with a passion and skill for languages, continued through his learning of English, but it was also interesting for any bilingual students to see how Giuseppe made the best of his advantages, now running a business that deals with clients from Russia. Giuseppe mentioned how ‘‘languages are an insurance, the world is constantly evolving and you never know which country will be best for your career in 5 years’’ and similarly, ‘languages give you options in countries where you may have a better quality of life’’. His passion and drive were eye-opening for us, and Giuseppe’s advice really allowed us to see just how advantageous languages are and how beneficial they can be for our future!
After having the opportunity to invite a selection of guest speakers to our club, we decided to present a series of presentations delivered by the leaders of the language and culture club!
Shreya Rajesh Shreya talked to the club about her parent’s mother tongue, Tamil, and the challenges she has had with maintaining the language growing up in Britain. Those who attended were fascinated to look at some of the oldest Indian scriptures called Vedas and the points of discussion also included how much India’s history has shaped its language(s) and societal customs we see to this day. With the many past invasions of civilization, each ‘group’ brought their unique culture and language with them to create the cultural melting pot seen in India today. The members debated the ethicality of India’s traditional caste system and how it is perceived today, this something that all the participants were able to share their thoughts and opinions on!
Helena Mills It might be thirty years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but it remains shrouded in mystery. Helena‘s presentation took the audience on a whistle-stop tour of the 15 independent republics of the (now dissolved) Union, looking at the wildly differing cultures and languages. We then dove into the heart of Russia - the republic of Tatarstan, home to the rich culture of the indigenous Tatar people and their capital Kazan which sits on the infamous Volga river, the longest river in Europe. We hope to hear more from members of our club, or indeed anyone who wishes to share their experiences with their culture and language(s) in the future!
Upcoming Speakers Continuing with the theme of stigmas and stereotypes within cultures, more of our students will be talking about their culture and fascinating superstitions, myths, and stereotypes associated with the culture. We are also delighted to announce that we have a number of Old Hymerians coming to speak to us about their professions, and how learning languages has helped shape their lives. If you are interested in learning more about life with languages, studying languages, and your fellow students’ cultures, feel free to join meetings on Fridays! You can also find powerpoints from previous talks on the Language and Culture page :) Language and Culture Club — Schoogle
Survey Summary: The Language and Culture Club recently did a survey about the variety of languages integrated into the Hymers student body. So many students and teachers speak a range of interesting languages other than French, Spanish and German! It was fascinating to see that out of the 241 participants, the most popular languages, apart from English, are Tamil and Urdu (7.1% each)! Languages spoken as a native language:
Languages that people are learning:
Did you know...?
The Urdu language
In 2004 Tamil was declared a classical language of India, meaning that it met three criteria: its origins are ancient; it has an independent tradition, and it possesses a considerable body of ancient literature. In the early 21st century more than 66 million people were Tamil speakers!
Urdu has been called one of the most beautiful and sophisticated languages spoken around the world. It is why Urdu speakers are such a delight to listen to and just through listening to Urdu poetry or music, one may be motivated to learn Urdu!
Tamil gave not only words but grammar to almost 400 languages. Root words of many languages are from Tamil. This includes Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and Korean. Most people pronounce Tamil incorrectly: Actually, Tamil is pronounced as Tamizh and not Tamil The “zh” has to be pronounced as It is the unique alphabet in the world and no language has the equivalent of that.
It sounds very much like Hindi because it was born in the Indian subcontinent. This Indo-European language became the preferred language of the Mughals during the Mughal Empire. The Urdu language formed from Khariboli which was spoken in North India at the time, picking up regional dialects and including Persian and Arabic contributions and influences along the way. Today, there are over 170 million native speakers of Urdu in India and Pakistan alone! Urdu is written in the Persian-Arabic script and unlike English; it is written from left to right.
Some students are learning languages through Babel and Duolingo! Some are learning Ukrainian or British Sign Language, Norwegian and Sinhalese! It’s great to see people independently learning a new language and taking on that challenge. Did you know that… Some of the many fascinating languages people are learning at Hymers are: - Fuqing dialect, also known as Hokchia. It belongs to the Sino Tibetan language family, with only around 1 million native speakers! -The Igbo language, also known as Ibo. It is considered to be one of the most widely used languages in West Africa. The language belongs to the Benue-Congo group of the Niger-Congo language family. - Saurashtra, an Indo-Aryan language spoken primarily by the Saurashtrians of Southern India who migrated from the Lata region of present-day Gujarat to south of Vindhyas in the Middle Ages. And many more like Afrikaans, Turkish, Latvian, Karachi, and Slovenian!
International Award Report During the Spring Term, it was announced that Hymers College had been awarded the Foundation Level of the International School Award, given by the British Council. The award is to show the progress a school has made in making international awareness a key part of school life. To take this a step further and achieve the Intermediate level the school would try to partner with others overseas and work collaboratively with them, increasing our cultural connections.
international work, meaning pupils will be able to learn more about other countries, cultures, and languages. Within the Language and Culture Club, we have put a large emphasis on trying to learn more about new cultures through talks about Hungarian or Indian Culture for example, and so this award will be extremely beneficial in hopefully exploring even more cultures. The award also ensures that a school is widely promoting language learning, due to the integral part languages play in internationalism and creating foreign partnerships, this is something all of us in the Language and Culture Club are keen to raise awareness about and has been discussed many times in our sessions!
Mr. Sanz Caro is optimistic for us to partner with a school in France, Spain, and Germany through which exchange partners could be organized as well as video calls with them! All schools who receive the award are given advice on how to further improve their
Linguistics Olympiad 2021 Report Our Year 12 and 13 language students recently took part in the UK Linguistics Olympiad (UKLO), which is a competition designed to task students across the country with linguistic data problems. The idea of the UKLO is to give you questions about languages that you will not recognize, which makes you have to carefully analyse the few examples they are giving you in order to find a pattern that can be applicable to the question you need to answer. In our first round, we answered five questions on the languages of Mandombe, Old and Middle Chinese, Nglkolmpu, Sauk, and Dagaare! These questions required us to do things such as matching the script of a language with its Roman transliteration and another made us compare the pronunciation of a language at two different points in history. Hymers produced some amazing results with Alexandra, Gemma, Guillaume, Jessica, Lucy, and Praketh all achieving a Bronze Award. In addition to this Erin, James, Jasmine, and Shreya all did incredibly well
to each achieve a Silver Award. And last but certainly not least both Chris and Helena won Gold Awards, putting them in the top 5% of all students who took part which is a fantastic achievement!
Welcome House, Hull Arriving in a foreign country as a refugee in a city chosen for you by the government means many refugees and asylum seekers find themselves in the City of Hull. Welcome House is a charity that provides support and acts as a safety net for these people at a very vulnerable time. The support provided by Welcome House, whether that be sign-posting, social, cultural, educational, or emotional support is crucial and therefore the volunteering club feels honoured to have had the opportunity to work with them and visit their new facility in these past few weeks.
We are excited to announce that the Hymers College Language and Culture Club will be working with Welcome House in the near future! We are currently in communication with the charity to see how we can help the volunteering effort, whether that be to visit the centre and talk to the refugees or getting involved in cultural events (and many more fascinating opportunities) For those students who have a TEFL qualification, you would have the chance to assist some of the refugees with their English language skills and for those who happen to speak their native languages, to chat with them in that language! By participating, you will develop a greater appreciation for their backgrounds and the hardships they have faced throughout their lives, as well as learning more about their individual cultures and traditions. We will be posting more information either in an assembly or via email, so keep an eye out if this is of interest to you!
British Sign Language Did you know that Miss Dai runs a British Sign Language Club on Mondays at lunchtime in A1? Krithi & Mel can tell you all about it! It’s important to learn BSL for many reasons. Firstly, it teaches you about a lot of deaf culture and what it’s like to live with this condition which is much needed in a society where there is minimal deaf representation in the media. Next, it gives you a better understanding of body language and how to interpret it which is very helpful in life. Finally, BSL is a language you can’t use a translator for so it’s a useful skill to have. I like BSL because I love to learn languages and I find it very interesting to learn about the origins of different signs and how they relate to the English words. I also believe that learning BSL helps build confidence in the way you do things like public speaking. Overall it is just very fun. Like in any other language BSL has patterns that can be applied to signing; for example little fingers are usually associated with signing bad things while thumbs are associated with good things. This applies to words like good, bad, sad and happy. BSL is a great club that will not only entertain you but teach you a lot about deaf culture and help you gain many new skills. Everyone should come and join our club for a fun lunchtime activity. Krithi
I want to learn sign language as I think it is important to be able to communicate with everyone and that no one should be excluded just because they communicate in a different way.
I like going to BSL Club because I feel as though I am doing something important with my time and it’s a great way to have fun with my friends. Mel
Current Affairs CURRENT ISSUES SPAIN : Luisa Los perfiles laborales más demandados se inscriben al ‘job hopping’: cambiar de trabajo cada uno o dos años
2021, el año en el que se equiparan los permisos de maternidad y paternidad en España
El job hopping (saltar de trabajo), es la nueva tendencia laboral que está teniendo éxito entre los menores de 34 años y les anima a cambiar de empleo con frecuencia. Lo hacen porque no sienten compromiso, ni se identifican con “las culturas de empresa”; no comparten el propósito de la compañía, ni su política de remuneración o de promoción. “Un job hopper de perfil tecnológico puede llegar a aumentar su salario en un 40% en los dos primeros años, un atractivo motivo por el que cambiar de empresa”.
La noticia es que este 2021, por primera vez en la historia del país, padre y madre tendrán el mismo tiempo de permiso de nacimiento, es decir, 16 semanas. Algo que se empezará a hacer efectivo a partir del 1 de enero.
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Con esta medida, España ampara una ley cada vez más igualitaria para ambos progenitores, convirtiéndose así en uno de los países más avanzados en este aspecto, al igual que ocurre en Suecia, Islandia o Dinamarca.
Miguel Bosé: cómo la compleja disputa por los hijos del cantante refleja los retos de los nuevos tipos de familia Miguel Bosé, cantante español, se está divorciando de su marido Ignacio Palau. Durante su matrimonio, tuvieron cuatro hijos por gestación subrogada. Dos de ellos son hijos biológicos del cantante y los otros dos son hijos biológicos de su exmarido. Sin embargo, hoy en día, tras la separación, la justicia española tiene el reto de determinar si los cuatro niños son legalmente hermanos y por lo tanto, ambos padres deben tener su custodia, o si por el contrario, los niños no son hermanos ya que son hijos de padres diferentes. Read more
CURRENT ISSUES GERMANY : Florence Mehr als 1200 neue Begriffe durch Corona Dr. Christine Möhrs, eine Forscherin des Leibniz-Instituts für Deutsche Sprache in Mannheim, kommt bis jetzt auf mehr als 1200 neue Wörter; oder Begriffe, die durch Corona umgedeutet wurden. Auf der Liste finden sich unter anderem “coronamüde”, “Distanzunterricht”, “Covidiot”, “Coronafrisur” und “CoronaFußgruß”. Dabei sind wohl nur etwa zehn Prozent der neuen Wörter aus dem Englischen entlehnt, wie Lockdown. Read more
Entdecken Sie das neue B-Wa(h)renhaus im Karstadt Hermannplatz
Hunderte Muslime beten auf Ikea-Parkplatz
Stefan Tidow, Staatssekretär für Umwelt und Klimaschutz, hat am 9. September 2020 mit dem B-Wa(h)renhaus den ersten Re-Use Store für Gebrauchtwaren in einem Berliner Kaufhaus eröffnet. Ein halbes Jahr lang werden gut erhaltene Gebrauchtwaren im 3. Stock bei Karstadt am Hermannplatz angeboten.
Rund 700 Muslime in Wetzlar haben zum Abschluss des Fastenmonats Ramadan einen ungewöhnlichen Ort zum gemeinsamen Festtagsgebet aufgesucht. Coronabedingt kamen sie statt in einer Moschee auf dem großen Parkplatz des Ikea-Möbelhauses in der mittelhessischen Stadt zusammen. Read more
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CURRENT ISSUES FRANCE : Rachid les médias (Médias) Il y a 20 ans, “Loft Story”
la musique (music) au Canada
Onze jeunes gens, un loft-studio de 225 m2, 26 caméras filmant en continu durant dix semaines. En 2001 débutait Loft Story, la plus marquante des premières télé-réalités diffusées en France.
Des artistes et membres de l’industrie de la musique en Acadie donnent leur appui au mouvement “notre musique, on veut l’entendre”, qui s’oppose à la réduction des quotas de musique francophone dans les radios commerciales.
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FIFA L’ex président de l’UEFS Michel Platini est entendu durant trois heures dans le cadre de l’enquête pénale visant Infantino. Publié le 12 Mars 2021 à 07h38. Read more
Reading Lists! Whether you want to boost your personal statement or simply want to expand your subject knowledge beyond classroom work, have a look at the reading lists below. These were kindly put together by Miss Tenniswood and feature everything from books, podcasts, newspapers, and TV shows... Russian literature to ancient Roman epics!
Super-curricular reading lists:
French | German | Russian | Latin | Spanish (Click on each language to access the documents)
Wordsearch Here is a fun little WordSearch for any Spanish speakers :) Feel free to have a go, even if you don’t speak Spanish (you might surprise yourself!) Next time will be a new language so keep your eyes out. Good Luck!
Busca 15 | Find 15 d i b u j a r c s z a y a q j
b a i l a r a u d z f r n d j
r e m o c n t z z s u e w u i
l e e r t r g d r r d e r c e
s k b a s p i u q t s i m g e
m v r z m v m m u f e n b r i
e s c r i b i r r r c t q j o
– bailar (dance) – cantar (sing) – comer (eat) – dibujar (draw) – dormir (sleep) – escribir (write)
p a n a d a r r t o w t y d b
r a f b n a a g k s d h d g r
b l t f z i i u x r d y r o o
q u e i d s a s c u d k g z z
t v n u n d w t y f p a r m y
f u t t q a o a s n y w g u y
– estudiar (study) – gusta (like) – leer (read) – nadar (swim) – patina (skate) – reir (laugh)
r s o j i d r t n d e e o q f
e d k c i g y v v z l y z d z
Meet the members of the Team!
Shreya
Helena
Lexie
Marie
Luisa
My name is Shreya Rajesh and I’m currently studying Spanish, History, and English Literature at A-level.
I’m Helena Mills and I am currently studying German, Latin and Maths at A Level.
I’m Alexandra ‘Lexie’ Ogram and I study German, Spanish and Politics for my A Levels. I obtained my passion for languages from my mum who studied French and German at University and since joining Hymers they have always been my favourite subject!
I’m Marie Kraus, currently studying Spanish, German and English Lang&Lit at A-level, and I am thoroughly enjoying my language studies! I have always enjoyed learning and using languages and have been intrigued by other cultures, as I grew up in a multicultural household, using multiple languages since I was little.
I’m Luisa Pinzón from Colombia and I’ve lived in the UK for 9 years. I’m currently working as a Spanish Language Assistant. I’ve always loved languages. I studied English and French at the university in my home country. I love working in Hymers with so many talented people who enjoy learning languages. I feel very lucky as I’ve learnt so much about other cultures while being in this country, and I hope to keep learning more and more everyday. In my spare time, I like going for walks in the English countryside.
Initially, the transition from GCSE Spanish to A level was a challenge, but it gave me the chance to step outside my comfort zone and gain a better appreciation for the language. I thoroughly enjoy practising my native language, Tamil, in India and I hope to visit Spain in the near future to improve my speaking skills and to learn more about Spanish culture!
Having grown up in Moscow, Russia, I developed a love and appreciation for different languages and cultures at a very early age; studying languages at Hymers has kept that feeling alive for me! When European travel resumes, I hope to visit Germany to practise my speaking skills, and returning to Russia is definitely on the agenda too!
Through playing Racketlon and Squash in different countries such as Germany and Luxembourg I have been able to explore more cultures and further practise the languages that I study!
Through the languages surrounding me, I have been able to grasp an understanding of how beneficial and eye-opening languages can be!
Follow Hymers Language and Culture Club on Twitter @Hymers_culture