Modern Languages and Latin

Studying modern languages alongside Latin is an unusual and intellectually rewarding combination. The modern language component connects you to living cultures, contemporary literature, film, and society, while Latin gives you access to a tradition of texts that shaped European thought, law, religion, and literature for two millennia. Together, they develop a linguistic precision and a historical range that few other degree combinations can match.

You become someone who can move between the ancient and the modern, who understands how languages change and why, and who can read a Roman poet, a twentieth-century novel, and the news of the day with equal attentiveness.

At the University of Exeter this three-year programme includes a year abroad and a placement year, so your four years of study give you sustained immersion in another country as well as professional experience. You will develop high-level proficiency in your chosen modern language or languages, alongside a reading knowledge of Latin that deepens your understanding of grammar, etymology, and the long arc of Western literary tradition. The curriculum encourages you to explore culture, history, and ideas rather than treating language as a mechanical skill, and you will build the kind of disciplined, comparative intelligence that is genuinely transferable.

Graduates of modern languages programmes move into careers in international business, diplomacy, journalism, publishing, translation and interpreting, education, heritage, and the arts. The addition of Latin is particularly valued in law, academia, and any role requiring close reading and strong written argument. Many go on to postgraduate study in linguistics, comparative literature, classical studies, or translation.

Employers in many sectors actively seek graduates who can communicate across cultures and who have shown the commitment and intellectual range that a languages degree demands.