Weird. Like, very weird. Maybe to prove that you're a student of the world? That you can understand multiple cultures?
I think the idea is that once, long ago, people used to write about English literature in other languages, and you should be able to read them. Or possibly that it would be nice not have to rely on translations for, like, random French phrases thrown into British Modernist texts. But even the faculty was sort of like, "Yeah, we don't know why that's there, or why PhD candidates have to know two foreign languages." But everywhere I applied had a language requirement.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2010-06-02 01:16 am (UTC)I think the idea is that once, long ago, people used to write about English literature in other languages, and you should be able to read them. Or possibly that it would be nice not have to rely on translations for, like, random French phrases thrown into British Modernist texts. But even the faculty was sort of like, "Yeah, we don't know why that's there, or why PhD candidates have to know two foreign languages." But everywhere I applied had a language requirement.