James Livingstone
Director of Studies, Wimbledon High School
15 September 2026
One of the great pleasures of learning languages is the never-ending discovery of new linguistic quirks and surprises – supposedly untranslatable words, baffling idioms, a single verb (‘to run’) that has, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, six-hundred-and-forty-five different meanings.
Twice this summer I happened upon discoveries like this that caught me particularly off guard. First, Mr Doepel told me incidentally that there is no standalone verb for ‘commute’ in Finnish (‘because the concept is largely alien to us,’ he explained matter-of-factly!). Second, when reading a novel in French, I came across an unfamiliar noun – ‘marmaille’ – which, to my delight, the online Oxford-Hachette dictionary translated for me instantly as ‘a rabble of brats’. These eccentric examples are not quite as trivial as they sound. Language study can be a kind of treasure hunt for new and interesting terms, sounds and ideas, but what you discover along the way often tells you something deeper. Take Mr Doepel’s point about commuting: people in Finland genuinely spend less time and money getting to work than in almost any other European country (apart from neighbouring Estonia, whose language also expresses the idea rather clunkily as ‘travelling to and from work’). Sometimes, in other words, a missing word can tell us as much about a culture as a new one.
Several US presidents have curiously tried to weaponise this idea against whole peoples, with spectacular incompetence. Ronald Reagan told a BBC interviewer in 1985, incorrectly, that ‘in the Russian language there isn’t even a word for freedom’. George W. Bush may similarly have claimed to Tony Blair, in a reputed remark whose irony needs little explanation, that ‘the French don’t have a word for entrepreneur’.
While Reagan was wrong about Russian having no word for freedom, perhaps it is a good thing he didn’t know that Russian has no exact equivalent for the English phrase ‘to have fun’. I still remember the surprise I felt, aged fifteen and learning Russian for the first time, when my teacher explained that the Russian word for ‘interesting’ is often the best translation for the English adjective ‘fun’. The New York Times went as far as publishing an entire article on the subject, pleasingly entitled ‘Why You’ll Never Have Fun in Russian’, in 1985.
A greater shock came only a few weeks later, when I learnt that Russian divides the colour blue into two basic categories. These aren’t simply two different shades, but two parts of the spectrum, with lighter blues generally described as goluboy and darker blues as siniy. There was, in that moment – and the feeling has never quite left me – something compelling about discovering that even categories which had always seemed universal to me could be drawn differently in another language. Russian speakers aren’t seeing a different colour spectrum, of course; rather, they are accustomed to organising and describing part of it in a way that English does not. It was an early glimpse for me of just how deeply language can shape what we notice, how we categorise our experience and, ultimately, how we make sense of the world around us.
So what is the point of all this in an age of increasingly sophisticated AI translation? Surely, if a machine can convert our words from one language into another almost instantaneously, the days of learning languages for mere communicative purposes must be numbered?
I don’t think so. In fact, AI may make the human reasons for learning languages more important, not less. The better machines become at the mechanical business of translation, the more clearly we can see what cannot be reduced to word-for-word conversion: context, humour, irony, emotion, cultural references, ambiguity, politeness and, above all, human intention. A striking 2026 study into AI translation found extensive difficulties with precisely these kinds of contextual and rhetorical nuances in United Nations speech translations. One UN interpreter puts the human dimension particularly vividly: ‘It is not uncommon for us to interpret through the tears and sobs of a speaker […]. As sophisticated as these systems may get, they will never be capable of human emotion. Machine emotion? Maybe. But human emotion? Never.’
And that, really, is the point. The purpose of learning a language is not simply to be able to convert one set of words into another, but to gain access to the human beings behind those words. Speaking to someone in their own language really is like speaking to a different person. I will never forget returning from my year abroad in St Petersburg and speaking fluently in Russian for the first time with one of my university Russian teachers, whom I had previously known largely in English, their second language. I could sense that a gap was being bridged – I was suddenly able to connect with and relate to them more fully and precisely than before. There was something previously inaccessible that I was now able to glimpse.
Learning another language teaches us to question our assumptions, tolerate ambiguity, take intellectual risks and remain curious about perspectives that are not our own. It makes the world larger.
Ultimately, knowledge of a language gives us an otherwise inaccessible insight into mentalities that are necessarily different from our own. It allows us to understand not just what someone is saying, but the references, assumptions, humour and habits of thought behind it. This matters in everything from diplomacy and international relations to friendship and everyday encounters. It is no coincidence that languages remain highly prized in careers ranging from intelligence to international business, law, journalism, science and technology. Often, the language itself is not the profession; it is the additional skill that allows someone to operate more intelligently and effectively within it.
And then there is the journey itself. One of the things I love most about language learning is that it never really ends. There is always another word to discover, another idiom that makes you laugh, another grammatical construction that makes you stop and think, another moment when you realise that you have understood something that would have been completely opaque to you a few months earlier.
Mark Twain famously joked about speaking French in Paris and receiving only a blank stare in response.[1] Anyone who has learnt a language will recognise the experience. You have rehearsed the sentence in your head, you are reasonably confident about the grammar, you have finally summoned up the courage to say it, and then you discover from the other person’s expression that something, somewhere, has gone badly wrong.
But I have come to think that this challenge, and even the fear of getting things wrong, is an essential part of the fun. There is something liberating about having to leap into the unknown and accept that you are not going to be perfect. The moments when you make mistakes are often the moments you remember most clearly. You learn not to be afraid of sounding foolish, and in doing so become more willing to take risks, ask questions and keep going.
The rewards are the little treasures you collect along the way. Sometimes they are linguistic curiosities: German allows you to make up ever-expanding compound adjectives such as ‘the recently-thrown-out-of-the-window-by-my-parents-PlayStation’ (John le Carré’s example).[2] Sometimes they are spectacular mistakes, such as the Russian translation of Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, released in cinemas as Dokazatel’stvo smerti (‘Proof of Death’),[3] reversing the original meaning completely. And sometimes they are found in the least glamorous places: I once encountered a dish of ox tongue in a canteen in St Petersburg whose English label had been mistranslated as ‘boiled language’, thanks to the fact that tongue and language are the same word in Russian. It is difficult to imagine a more perfect accidental advertisement for the perils – and pleasures – of translation.
But perhaps these linguistic treasures are not really the most valuable thing we collect. The real treasure is what learning a language does to us. It opens us up to different lifestyles, assumptions, cultural references and perspectives. The more languages we encounter, the harder it becomes to imagine that our own way of doing things is simply the natural or obvious one. Learning another language teaches us to question our assumptions, tolerate ambiguity, take intellectual risks and remain curious about perspectives that are not our own. It makes the world larger.
And that is why languages are for everyone. There is sometimes an unfortunate assumption that language learning is principally for people who are naturally good at memorising vocabulary, have an instinctive ear for accents or happen to find grammar easy. I don’t think that is true. Language learning draws on an extraordinary range of abilities: sound, pattern, rhythm, visual recognition, repetition, problem-solving, memory, creativity and communication. Different learners will find different doors into the subject.
Indeed, there is no single kind of mind that belongs in a language classroom. The ability to spot patterns, make unexpected connections, think creatively, listen carefully or persevere through difficulty can all become genuine strengths. For some students , particularly those whose strengths do not always fit the narrowest definition of academic success, languages can offer a particularly rich and rewarding way into learning.
That is one reason why Languages Week, which has been running across the Senior School from 21–26 September, matters so much. It gives us a chance to celebrate this breadth: to inspire students who already love languages, to introduce others to languages they may never have encountered before, and to show just how many ways there are into the subject. We take language learning seriously at Wimbledon High, with pupils introduced to languages from Reception upwards, but we also want them to experience the curiosity, creativity and sheer enjoyment that make language learning so rewarding.
And perhaps we are particularly fortunate in our vibrant school community, where staff, parents and students bring with them a multitude of languages from all over the globe. Every one of those languages offers its own collection of linguistic treasures – its own words, sounds, jokes, assumptions and ways of seeing the world. The treasure hunt, in other words, is already happening all around us. The challenge is simply to start exploring.
[1] Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, or the New Pilgrims’ Progress (Hartford, CT: American Publishing Company, 1869), chap. LXI
[2] John le Carré, ‘Why we should learn German’, The Guardian, 2 July 2017
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/jul/02/why-we-should-learn-german-john-le-carre [accessed 30 August 2026]
[3] ‘Lost in translation: Russian film title fails’, New East Digital Archive, 21 August 2013
https://www.new-east-archive.org/articles/show/1318/lost-in-translation-russian-film-title-fails [accessed 30 August 2026]