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An initio languages

Does anyone know if you can take Arabic and Russian from scratch together through flexible combined honours at Exeter university?

Reply 1

Snufkin

Universities Forum Helper

Original post by jgt811

Does anyone know if you can take Arabic and Russian from scratch together through flexible combined honours at Exeter university?

I suggest you email the university directly and ask, I doubt anyone on here will know. An old TSR user did this combination at Manchester, I remember they struggled a lot. Frankly, it is unwise to take two such difficult languages from scratch unless you are an extremely competent linguist, and even then, you probably won't achieve the same level of proficiency as people who just take one ab initio language.

Reply 2

artful_lounger

Universities Forum Helper

When I enquired about ab initio languages for FCH many moons ago, they indicated it's not possible to take two languages from scratch - or maybe it's not possible without also having 1 or 2 languages at A-level/equivalent already, so they know you can learn languages.

As Snufkin said, email them, however based on what I recall from that time I'm fairly certain the answer would be "no". However you could probably take Russian and Islamic Studies or something along those lines, studying the one language from scratch and taking culture/literature options in the other. The Islamic Studies department there is fairly well established (which teaches the languages as well as English based modules to my knowledge).

Since I was looking at similar combinations previously, as I recall Leeds, St Andrews and Oxbridge were the only ones that formally allowed it, although you could conceivably study the one language as a degree and learn the other language through other methods (many universities have non-degree/credit bearing language study through e.g. evening classes, run by the university itself. You do normally have to pay for these though).