Chinese Studies - German

Chinese studies and German is a combination that gives you access to two of the world's most important languages and cultural traditions. Chinese is spoken by more people than any other language in the world and is central to understanding the culture, history, and contemporary development of one of the most influential civilisations on the planet. German is the most widely spoken native language in Europe, the language of one of the world's largest economies, and a gateway to a literary and intellectual tradition that includes Goethe, Kafka, and Hegel.

Studying them together gives you a genuinely international linguistic and cultural perspective.

At the University of St Andrews, you will develop high-level proficiency in both languages over four years full-time, engaging with the literatures, cultures, and visual and popular cultural practices of China and the Chinese-speaking world alongside the literature, culture, and society of German-speaking Europe. The Chinese studies strand at St Andrews takes a broad approach, going beyond traditional models of language and literature to engage with contemporary cultural production across different media. The German strand develops your language skills alongside a deep engagement with German literary and cultural history.

The programme includes a year abroad, which is central to achieving genuine fluency in both languages and to developing the cultural understanding that makes language study meaningful. The typical entry tariff is 200 UCAS points.

Graduates with Chinese and German are sought after in international business, diplomacy, journalism, translation and interpreting, the civil service, academic research, and cultural organisations. The combination of the two most economically significant languages in Asia and Europe is unusual and genuinely valuable to employers with international operations or interests.