Monthly Archives: January 2026

ShoutOutForGerman / Some German words

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Shout Out For German is an initiative of the German Embassy, Goethe Institut and DAAD:

It’s time to celebrate the German language in the UK! The German Embassy, together with the Goethe-Institut UK and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), invites you to take part in our social media campaign #ShoutOutForGerman – your chance to share your language learning highlights with the world.

 

Whether you’re a student, a teacher, or just a fan of the German language, from 19 to 24 January 2026, show your enthusiasm for Deutsch on social media. Use the hashtag #ShoutOutForGerman and tag the German Embassy London to showcase your school’s activities, your favourite German words, travel memories, a clip of you dancing to a viral German song – anything goes!

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Alum, alumnus, alumna, alumni

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Email from King’s College London:

Dear Margaret,

Your connection to King’s doesn’t end when your studies do. As a King’s alum, you remain part of our community and your opinions and interests matter.

In our alumni survey, we are hoping to learn more about how our alumni feel about King’s, our alumni offer and how they’d like to stay connected. …

Interestingly, it goes on to say:

To recognise and celebrate the contribution of our alumni, five people who complete the survey will be chosen at random to have their profile displayed on the digital screens on The Strand, alongside our notable alumni.

I am curious about the new term alum, which avoids them having to write alumnus/alumna in a standard email. I suspect it will get more common – it’s currently usually recommended for casual rather than official use, which explains why they go on to use alumni. There seems no inclination to use alumnae as a feminine plural.

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Books I read in 2025

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Books I read in 2025
It seems popular to post a list of books one has read in the year. Unfortunately, I can’t remember which I have read and whether it was this year or last. Still less can I do an Instagram or TikTok post showing a physical pile of books. I have gradually remembered more though, but my achievement is a pathetic 25 rather than 50, 60 or 100. Of course I partly read other books, but I assume this game requires me to have read the complete books. The German-language ones I read in German. The sequence is not chronological.

Yiyun Li: Things in Nature Merely Grow
Yiyun Li: Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life
John Burnside: A Lie About My Father
Kazuo Ishiguro: A Pale View of Hills (A film of this came out, but after reading the novel I thought it was too subtle to film – may get round to it)
Kazuo Ishiguro: An Artist of the Floating World (reread)
Jung Chang: Wild Swans (reread), started to read the sequel but not got far. (Wild Swans is brilliant because Jung Chang’s mother visited her some years after she moved to the UK and dictated sixty hours of memories of what it was like bringing up a family in the Mao era and keeping one’s opinions away from the children – also memories of the grandmother who was married to a warlord and had bound feet – so really the story of three generations of women)
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Der Zauberberg, Thomas Mann

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I’m re-reading Der Zauberberg. It’s been a good fifty years since the last ‘read’, and I now know to take it slowly and with enjoyment.

The novel was published over 100 years ago, in November 2024. And two new translations are about to appear, one by Susan Bernofsky in the USA (translation only just finished), with W.W. Norton, and one by Simon Pare in the UK, Oxford World’s Classics, appearing on March 12th 2026. The Pare translation has an introduction by Ritchie Robertson, and detailed notes explaining the many cultural and historical references in the text. Sounds excellent, and I am looking forward to seeing what the reviewers say about the novel.

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