The Linguist

6 The Linguist Vol/60 No/5 2021 thelinguist.uberflip.com NEWS & EDITORIAL In the media PHILIP HARDING-ESCH The summer brought with it the year's GCSE and A level results. Despite an uptick in Spanish, overall entries "flatlined" due to a fall in German. This led The Times to declare that the "government drive to increase the GCSE uptake of modern languages appears to be failing". This was on the back of worrying data from the British Council's annual Language Trends report, summarised by the Guardian headline "Millions of pupils in England had no language teaching in lockdowns". TES focused its reporting on the fact that "Covid has had a bigger impact on languages in schools in the most deprived areas". Meanwhile, the Financial Times ran an op-ed by a primary school governor calling for schools "to celebrate the fact so many of our kids are bilingual. Why are we not doing more to build on that?" There was a mixed picture in the university sector, with Times Higher Education reporting an "overall languages decline masking slight growth in some areas". Some universities and courses seem to be faring better than others. There was interesting news in the technology sector as Duolingo launched its family plan "and new ways to learn non-Latin characters" including Korean and Hindi, according to The Verge. In The Guardian, the cognitive scientist Benjamin Weissman discussed the subject of emojis – "how these little symbols enhance the way we communicate" and whether "thinking in emojis" is possible. There was distressing reading on the subject of Afghan interpreters and translators trying to leave Afghanistan and settle in the UK as the country fell to the Taliban. Calls for the UK's relocation policy to be "reviewed again immediately" were widely reported. The cause was taken up by Clive Lewis MP, who served in Afghanistan. He wrote in The Guardian that he "saw Afghan interpreters translate so much more than words". Philip Harding-Esch is a freelance languages project manager and consultant. Welsh policy 'not inclusive' NI reaches deal on Irish equality Helsinki mayor calls for English Northern Ireland ministers have agreed to give Irish equal status with English to avoid derailing the new power-sharing executive. Sinn Féin agreed to nominate the DUP's Paul Givan as First Minister after his party approved the compromise. He replaces Arlene Foster, who lost the job in June. The introduction of an Irish Language Act was a key requirement of the New Decade, New Approach agreement of 2020, which restored the Northern Ireland Assembly following its collapse in 2017. However, after 18 months it had yet to be realised. An Irish-language bill will now be passed in Westminster. Factory payout: English-only rule The mayor of Helsinki has argued that the capital of Finland should declare itself an English-language city, as it suffers from a lack of professionals in key fields. Juhana Vartiainen added that the government's attempts to improve the situation had been "a terrible failure". Since 2020, people have been allowed to move to Finland for a 90-day trial. The mayor believes that skilled foreign workers are deterred by language policies that require all public sector staff, and employees of many businesses, to speak Finnish and Swedish. The Welsh language policies of two arts bodies in Wales were found to "exclude Black and non-Black people of colour". This was part of a wider investigation by the Welsh Arts Anti Racist Union, which found that the Arts Council of Wales and Amgueddfa Cymru/ National Museum Wales are structurally racist. Stakeholders called for the focus on speaking Welsh to be relaxed, and for on-the- job language-learning support to be offered, in order to make recruitment more accessible. Currently, the Arts Council of Wales tests the Welsh proficiency of employees annually. Both organisations welcomed the findings and said they would address the issues raised. A tribunal has ruled that an English-only policy at a nut factory was "not justified", awarding an employee £10,000 in compensation. Albina Sokolova was disciplined for speaking with her colleagues in Latvian because the language policy of her employer, Humdinger Ltd, required workers to speak in English except during "rest and lunch breaks". Sokolova won a claim for racism after she was denied an interpreter at disciplinary meetings even though she was not proficient in English. AGREEMENT: Stormont parliament building CC BY-SA 3.0

• Cover