then he went on about how joan had gone scuttling off to find dad for her , and how hed watched them all as theyd sat in the modern languages common room and how shed got chatting with ernst weber from german and very soon they were all jabbering away in german because shes such a proficient german speaker and how dads kudos had gone sky high as a result , because the german department normally looks down on the chaps from the romance languages but now here he was almost one of them .