There have been many events commemorating the centenary of the First World War and its key moments. A new book edited jointly by an Oxford academic, Toby Garfitt, and a young researcher from France, Nicolas Bianchi, takes a fresh look at some of the literary responses to the conflict on both sides of the Channel. The volume is deliberately bilingual, and is entitled Writing the Great War/Comment écrire la Grande Guerre? This was very much a collaborative, interdisciplinary project, bringing together specialists from departments of English and French Studies in Britain, France and Belgium, and the preface is by the distinguished war historian Sir Hew Strachan.
The subtitle, ‘Francophone and Anglophone Poetics’, makes it clear that the word ‘Writing’ in the main title is essential. Just how do you write such an overwhelming and unprecedented experience? French authors favoured prose, with some major exceptions, but how far could and should prose negotiate the line between realism and invention? English authors favoured verse, but that verse needs to be appreciated in a wider context of writing. There is a proliferation of voices, registers and styles, with traditional genre-distinctions often breaking down. How can one reconcile the complexity of experience and perception with literary form or political ideology? What is the place of irony and humour? What types of character are developed? What do we know about non-European, non-white perspectives on the war as revealed in poetry and songs from across the world?
You may know, or think you know, about Owen and Sassoon, Apollinaire and Barbusse and Céline, but what explains their different perspectives? What about their personal letters, what about the process of writing and correcting? This book offers a stimulating challenge to readers on both sides of the Channel to broaden their understanding of texts, contexts, and critical studies (the bibliography is particularly full and helpful).
This post was written by Martha MacLaren, a fourth-year German and History student at Somerville College.
Walking down Broad Street at the weekend, I was hit by the familiar smell of German sausages and mulled wine, and the hubbub of the Oxford Christmas market brought back memories from my year abroad. In Salzburg, a beautiful cathedral city on the edge of the Alps, I lived right on the central square where the Christkindlmarkt was held every year – that smell wafted through my window whenever I dared to open it to the below-freezing temperatures in frosty December!
Christkindlmarkt is the Austrian equivalent of the German Weihnachtsmarkt. The latter translates as Christmas market, but the Austrian reflects the tradition of the Christ Child who visits children with presents on 6th December. Christ means Christ, and Kindl is the diminutive of Kind (child) – so ‘little-Christ-child market’. In Austria, an “l” is often used instead of a German “chen” – “Mädel” instead of “Mädchen”, for example. You can see why it’s easier to yodel in Austrian German!
Sausages such as Bratwurst and Käsewurst (sausage with cheese inside – delicious) were sold for about half of the £6 you’d pay for them here – and not in a hot dog bun, but with a Semmel, a bread roll. They’d probably be served with Sauerkraut und Senf (pickled cabbage and mustard), which is as disgusting as it sounds! Glühwein (mulled wine) was a favourite, and you needed it to warm your hands, especially after ice skating on the outdoor rink on Mozartplatz. Kaiserschmarrn, thick and fluffy torn up pancakes, were cooked on a griddle and served with Apfelmus (apple sauce) or Zwetschkenröster (stewed plums). There’s another word – Zwetschke – that’s different from the German (Pflaume).
Beautiful decorations, organic chocolate and fancy soaps abounded, alongside the classic Mozart-themed touristy gifts. Salzburg is very proud of its most famous cultural export! The tasteful lights and Christmas tree topped off the scene, with the cathedral and fortress forming the backdrop. I can’t wait to go back, but this year I’ll content myself with Oxford’s buzzing market as term comes to an end.
We have just launched our annual competitions in French and Spanish. Details are below. If you have any questions please contact schools.liaison@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk. We look forward to reading your entries! Bonne chance! ¡mucha suerte!
Spanish Flash Fiction Competition
Did you know that the shortest story in Spanish is only seven words long? Here it is:
‘Cuando despertó, el dinosaurio todavía estaba allí’ (Augusto Monterroso, “El dinosaurio”).
Write a story in Spanish of not more than 100 words, and send it to schools.liaison@mod-langs.ox.ac.ukby noon on Friday 30th March 2018 with your name, age and year group, and the name and address of your school. A first prize of £100 will be awarded to the winning entry in each category (Years 7-11 and 12-13), with runner-up prizes of £25. The judges will be looking for creativity and imagination as well as good Spanish! The winning entries will be published on our website.
French Film Competition
The Department of French at Oxford University is looking for budding film enthusiasts in Years 7-11 and 12-13 to embrace the world of French cinema. To enter the competition, students in each age group are asked to re-write the ending of a film in no more than 1500 words. You can work in English or French. We won’t give extra credit to entries written in French – this is an exercise in creativity, rather than a language test! – but we do encourage you to give writing in French a go if you’re tempted, and we won’t penalize entries in French for any spelling or grammar mistakes.
The judges are looking for plausible yet imaginative new endings, picking up the story from the point specified (see below). There are no restrictions as to the form the entry might take: screen-play, play-script, prose, prose with illustrations. We’d also love to see filmed entries (e.g. on YouTube): feel free to experiment!
For the 2018 competition we have chosen the following films for each age bracket:
Years 7-11: Une vie de chat (2010, dir. Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol)
Years 12-13: Des Hommes et des dieux (2010, dir. Xavier Beauvois)
A first prize of £100 will be awarded to the winning student in each age group, with runner-up prizes of £25.
Your re-writing must pick up where the film leaves off, from the following points:
Une vie de chat: from 49:20, when Nico says: ‘Allez, accroche-toi bien Zoë’.
Des Hommes et des dieux: from 1:38:50, where Christian says ‘J’ai longtemps repensé à ce moment-là…’
Here are the trailers, to give you a taster:
DO’S AND DON’TS!
DO keep to the word limit (1500 words)! Going over will lead to disqualification.
DO use your imagination, and present your re-writing in any format you like – essay, screenplay, short film, storyboard, etc…. There is nothing stopping you from watching the ‘real’ ending and then modifying it as you see fit. Indeed, you might find this helpful. We’re looking for creative, entertaining and inventive new endings, which address as fully and plausibly as possible the strands of the story that are left unresolved at the end-points we’ve specified above.
DO send in (through your teacher) individually named submissions. If you work in a group, the entry must still be sent under one name only: this is just to ensure as much as possible parity and fairness between entries, and to avoid any distinction between smaller and larger groups. There is a limit of 10 entries per school per age group.
DO make sure you give your teacher enough time to approve and forward your submission!
DON’T worry about which language you write in – and if you write in French (which we encourage, if you would like to), remember we do not penalise grammatical errors or spelling mistakes.
DON’T forget to include a filled-in cover-sheet, signed by your teacher. Without this, your entry will not be judged.
DON’T worry if you’re at the lower end of your age-range (especially Years 7 and 8). We particularly encourage entries from younger students, and we’ll take your age into account when judging your entry.
Where can I or my school/college get hold of the films?
The DVDs are readily and affordably available via Amazon (http://www.amazon.co.uk or http://www.amazon.fr). The films may also be available through legal streaming services (e.g. Amazon Prime, Google Play, or Blinkbox).
How do I send in my entry?
We’d like all your school’s entries to be submitted via your teacher please. Ask your teacher to attach your entries to an email, along with a cover sheet, which you can download here, and send it to french.essay@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk by noon on 31st March 2018. NB, to avoid missing the deadline, we suggest that you aim to give your teacher your entry and completed cover sheet by 24th March at the latest.
by Hector Stinton, a third-year undergraduate in French and Spanish at Keble College
Embalse el Yeso (‘Yeso Dam’) in the Andes.
Chilean Spanish is the most idiosyncratic Hispanic variant, and it’s partly why I applied to work as a teacher in Santiago for my year abroad. Its earliest phonetic influence was from Andalusian conquistadores, who brought to America yeísmo (/y/ and /ll/ pronounced the same) and seseo (soft /c/ and /z/ pronounced as /s/, itself unpronounced word-finally), but it developed into a more distinctive accent with the conversion of /j/ into aspirate /h/ and the elision of /d/ in words like ciudad. Chile’s geo-political isolation made its patois evolve rapidly and hermetically: separated from its neighbours by the Andes and the Atacama until the 19th century, and with relations soured by conflict and suspicion since then, Chileanese became a point of national pride.
A huaso (‘cowboy’) at a rodeo during the Fiestas Patrias in Ñuñoa, Santiago
As in other Latin countries, the diminutive –ito/a is used to express affection and diminish the urgency, directness or importance of something, e.g. making something annoying seem more pleasant, and the voseo (use of vos as a second person singular pronoun instead of tuteo) forms the bottom two of the four grades of formality, below tú and usted. Interestingly, however, among friends, Chileans prefer the Italianate –ai or –ei ending to the Iberian –as or –es when using tú in the present tense. More unusual still is the replacement of nuestro ‘our’ with de nosotros, and the rejection of vosotros in favour of ustedes for ‘you plural’.
But above all, Chilean-speak is known for its plethora of peculiar idioms and neologisms, known as chilenismos; look in any Spanish dictionary, and you will see they predominate over all other vernaculars. There are three broad categories: Argentine / Rioplatense / Lunfardo (argot from Buenos Aires and Montevideo) terms carrying either covert prestige or criminal Coa undertones (hacer perro muerto ((literally, ‘to do a dead dog’)) – ‘to dine and dash’); Mapudungun / Quechua loanwords (copihue – Chile’s national flower, huaso – ‘cowboy’); and French / (Swiss-)German / English / Croat loanwords (confort – ‘loo paper’, lumpen – ‘lower class’, cachar – ‘to catch one’s drift’, corbata – ‘tie’). Together, they further enrich the Chilean dialect, which never fails to surprise and delight.
Some Chilenismos
hacer perro muerto – to dine and dash
huaso – cowboy
confort – loo paper
cachar – to catch one’s drift
Feeding time at the fish market in Coquimbo (pelicans, stray dogs, sea lions)
A blog for students and teachers of Years 11 to 13, and anyone else with an interest in Modern Foreign Languages and Cultures, written by the staff and students of Oxford University. Updated every Wednesday!
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