The Taylorian could not be left out of the Kafka24 celebrations taking place this year! We organised a range of activities on the theme of language learning, taking inspiration from Kafka’s own language learning practice.
Kafka was multilingual, reading French, Greek, Czech and learning Hebrew and Italian. He recorded some of his language learning techniques in notebooks. Kafka’s notebooks demonstrate both regular study and routine (lists of vocabulary laboriously copied out) and eclectic combinations of phrases. His writing frequently breaks out of the ordered rows of terms, with undisciplined-appearing scrawl. What was he learning, why, and how did he go about it?
The Taylorian curated an exhibition with a facsimile of one of Kafka’s language-learning notebooks at the centre. The exhibition highlights Kafka’s language learning techniques, presents some first editions of his work, and also shows language-learning strategies through the ages, from an 18th century guide and conversation book to gramophone records recorded in 1929.
First editions of some of Kafka’s works
The exhibition then moves to a wider examination of different strategies that current students and staff are using to learn languages – some more successfully than others! Throughout Trinity Term readers were invited to submit suggestions of good language learning strategies. The exhibition presents material examples – games, songs, flash cards, toys, stationery and lots of good intentions – along with short videos explaining how some of them have been used in practice.
Some of the language-learning tips were put into practice by monolingual Master’s student Cassidy Serhienko as she tried to learn German from scratch! She documented her progress on TikTok and wrote a blog post about her experiences.
We also invited readers to have fun with languages by labelling our dolls house and the Sylvanian family living in it. We have put the inhabitants in a display case for the exhibition but do continue to label the house in any languages you choose!
Sylvanian family house of rabbits, labelled in several languages
Finally, we are hoping to start a conversation on why we choose to learn languages.
“a more comparative study of European literature in our schools and universities […] would be a pledge for the peace of the world and would make war more and more impossible”
Professor H.G. Fiedler ‘World Literature’, Oxford Cosmopolitan, 1 (1) (1908), 3–4.
Or maybe we just learn languages because it is fun! What motivates you? Please add your thoughts to our noticeboard, or post them on TikTok, Instagram or Twitter/X. Don’t forget to tag @TAYOxford and use the hashtag #KafkasLanguages24.
We’ve loved playing with languages and hope our Kafka-inspired enthusiasm will come across to anyone thinking of studying languages at any level.