European Week of Languages 2025

European Week of Languages 2025

Friday was European Day of Languages (26 September)! This year’s week of events and competitions for European Week of Languages at St Paul’s provided an uplifting and joyous celebration of language-learning and European culture, both modern and ancient.

On Wednesday, we were delighted to welcome back Professor Thomas Wynn (Durham University) whose compelling talk to the Fourth Form ‘Why English Isn’t Enough’ demonstrated how the study of modern foreign languages is able to appeal to a broad range of academic interests, how languages are uniquely placed to equip pupils with cross-cultural awareness, and how languages will serve pupils in their future careers.

On Thursday, we continued this theme with a fascinating panel discussion with Mr Tofts and multilingual parents with careers in fields as varied as finance, law, and government. Fourth form pupils heard how languages had given our guests a professional edge in variety of fascinating contexts. Our panellists agreed that the cultural understanding and human connection that multilingualism gives will likely never be trumped by technological advances in AI.

As well as enjoying the morning tannoy announcements in other languages each day, our pupils have thrown themselves into the exciting range of activities on offer with great enthusiasm and curiosity.

Our brilliant languages assistants turned the school into an enormous language-themed escape room on Thursday lunchtime, with Fifth form pupils cracking linguistic codes to be first to find the treasure.

A very competitive staff vs pupils University Challenge in Wednesday’s Eurosoc ended with the teachers finally reclaiming the crown from the Upper Eighth, even if the result came down to a tie-break. Mr Perrin and Ms James’ fiendishly difficult questions about international dialling codes, European football, Eurovision, Russian numbers, and American cities had the audience gripped!

We have enjoyed a series of fascinating pupil talks on subjects as varied as Japanese numbers, kanji, the origins of Portuguese, Farsi, Modern Greek, and Russian.

In French, pupils have taken part in a challenging Meilleur Pâtissier crêpe making contest and competed fiercely for the house pétanque crown which this year was won by Stewart House.

In German, pupils read Goethe with Dr McInteer while sampling delicious Kaffee und Kuchen in morning break. Our fourth form beginners also got stuck into some German compound nouns in their lessons this week.

In Classics, Fourth Form pupils have learnt about the impact of Latin on the modern world in their classics lessons, Ms Glen gave a compelling talk about Proto Indo-European at Classical Society, and pupils recreated some ancient Olympic athletic events with Mr Harrison and Mr Stewart.

In Italian, pupils learnt about and sampled mountains of gelato, learnt how to order alla gelateria, made some stunning tiramisù, and will make traditional Sicilian cannoli next week.

In Spanish, pupils have embraced their musical sides with Spanish karaoke and taken part in a Spanish scrabble competition.

To round off a busy and hugely satisfying week, House Languages Countdown took place in Atrium on Friday lunchtime with pupils working against the clock to find the longest possible words in a foreign language from a random combination of nine letters. Pupils’ speed of thought and linguistic prowess greatly impressed the judges.

Well done to all of the winners and thank you to all of the pupils and staff for organising and running such a varied, informative and, above all, fun week of activities.

Félicitations, Gut gemacht, Congratulazioni, Gratulationes, Felicidades and thank you to all who took part!

House Pétanque
Winners: Max and Sammy (Upper Eighth) and (Fourth Form) – Stewart House
Runners Up: Francesco (Upper Eighth) and Theo (Fourth Form) – Harrison House

Pupils vs Languages Teachers University Challenge
Winners: Mrs Cotton, Miss Musa, Miss Rahim, and Mr Tofts
Very close runners-up: Reuben, Elyas, Seb, Sam, Max (all Upper Eighth)

Fifth Form Languages Escape Room
Winners: Mariano, Aengus, Jonny, Thibault (All Fifth Form)

Meilleur Pâtissier crêpe making
Winners: Dhruv, Siddarth, Andrew, and Rayaan

House Languages Countdown
Winners: Stewart
Second: Langley
Third: Harrison

Fourth Form House Languages Passports Competition
Winners: Langley
Joint Second: Blurton and Nilsson