Topic: Language Recognition and Language Families
"It's Not All Greek to Me: Saying Hello Around the World."
Overview/Abstract: Students will be able to see the word “hello” written
in many different languages, try to pronounce them, and
perhaps even listen to them. Then they will try to group
them, look at a language family tree, discuss which languages
are related to each other.
Theme or Essential Question: How do the various world languages
look and sound? How have world languages diffused and changed
through history?
Time Required: 30-80 minutes
Suggested Grade Level: Grades 5 - 9
Interdisciplinary Applications: Social Studies, World Languages, English, and E.S.L.
NJ Core Content Standards:
6.5 (Students will understand varying cultures throughout the history of New Jersey, the United
States and the world.) Students will get to see and hear
various languages and look at how languages have developed
over time, and which are related to each other.
7.1 (Students will be able to communicate at a basic literacy
level in at least one language other than English). Students
will get to see, hear, and pronounce words in various languages.
Instructional Objectives: Students Will Be Able To:
- Look, listen, and try to pronounce many different languages
- Identify many different languages and where they are spoken
- Arrange languages into families and analyze their development
- Discuss and assess how and why languages are related
Strategies:
- Place the students into cooperative learning groups of 3-5
students and have them move their desks together.
- Hand out the “Hello”
list that is found at the end of this lesson plan.
Note: If you photocopy the lists (you need one per group)
do not photocopy the two pages back to back because the
students will be cutting out the words later.
- List on the board or photocopy on another piece of paper
(again, one per group) the following countries and languages:
Hindi (India), Asante (Africa), China, English, Georgia,
Dutch, Zulu (Africa), Hebrew, Xhosa (Africa), Ireland, Ukraine,
Japan, Thailand, Latin, Sweden, Portugal, Swahili (Africa),
Russia, Romania, Poland, Korea, Italy, Hungary, Germany,
Spain, Afrikaan (Africa), Arabic, Farsi/Persian (Iran),
Greece, Yiddish, Vietnam, Turkey, and Tagalog (Philippines).
Instruct the students to discuss as a group, which “hello”
matches which country or language. They should try to match
the most obvious first and then make educated guesses on
the rest. Have them write their answers in on the piece
of paper next to each “hello”. Give them about 10 minutes
to do this.
- When they have matched most or all of “hellos”, read out
the correct answers to the students. Correct answers are
at end of lesson plan as well, after the original list.
For fun, try to pronounce some of the “hellos” as a class,
group, or individual.
- Optional Activity: If you have internet access in your classroom,
before or after trying to pronounce the “hellos”, go to
http://www.travlang.com/languages/index.html.
Once on the index page, “click” on your choice of language,
submit “Basic Words” and then “click” on hello or any other
word that you would like to hear spoken. Perhaps even let
the kids “surf” around to other languages, phrases, and
words for awhile in class, or assign it for a home assignment.
Another site that has spoken word on it in other languages
is http://vraptor.jpl.nasa.gov/voyager/lang.html.
That site has greetings to the universe spoken in 55 different languages in children’s voices.
- Optional Activity: Using blank outline maps or a large
wall map, discuss and have the students locate where all
of these languages are spoken. The students can label the
outline maps and/or use “post-its” or erasable marker on
the wall map.
- Next have the students cut up the “hellos” into separate
strips that includes the correct matching language or country
on it. Instruct the cooperative groups to try to group
as many languages as possible by which ones they think are
related to each other. Instruct them to use any outside
knowledge they may already have, as well as looking to see
which ones just look related to each other. Give them 5-10
minutes to do this in groups and then make groupings on
the board, based on class consensus or majority.
- Pass out the Indo-European Language Tree located at the
end of the lesson plan to each group or locate it at http://www.georgetown.edu/cball/oe/oe-ie.html.
Make the necessary corrections for the groupings on the
board and discuss these questions: Which languages are
you surprised are related or not related to each other?
Where do you think the beginning of this tree might be?
(Linguists believe that Indo-European languages originated
somewhere around the Black Sea, but there is still debate
on the issue.) Are you surprised that Persian/Farsi and
Indian languages are grouped with European languages? How
do you think that may have happened? Are you surprised
that Greek and Russian are not closely related, but yet
look very similar? Why might that be? (The Russian Cyrillic
alphabet is adapted from the Greek alphabet.) What language
did English develop from? If that is so, why do we have
so many Latin words and roots in our language? (They were
added later.) Looking at this chart, which languages would
you think would be easier for English speakers to learn?
Are there any European languages that you do not see on
the chart? (Finnish Georgian, Turkish and Hungarian—linguists
believe that they traveled from northern Asia into Europe.
In fact Turkish and Mongolian are closely related.) What
African language is on the Indo-European tree? Why? (Afrikaans.
It was brought to South Africa from Dutch settlers where
Dutch was mixed with English and some African languages)
How come Yiddish and Hebrew look very similar but are not
closely related? (They use the same alphabet but Yiddish
developed manly from German with only a few Hebrew words
mixed in.) As for the Asian countries, how many different
families do you think are represented? (4 or 5, depending
on the linguist.) Hebrew and Arabic belong to the same family,
and Korean and Japanese belong to the same family, which
is also the same family as Turkish and Mongolian. Korean
and Japanese use similar characters as Chinese but their
language is not related. The next family is Chinese and
shown there is Cantonese, which is the second most widely
spoken form of Chinese; the most widely spoken is Mandarin.
All forms of Chinese belong to the same family and are closely
related to Tibetan and Burmese. Some linguists also group
Thai, Lao, and Vietnamese with Chinese; others group it
as their own family. Tagalog or Fillipino is completed
unrelated to the other Asian languages; the languages it
is related to are languages spoken in Madagascar and Comoros
[all the way near Africa—how could that be? Because f
the migration of people], Polynesia, and Indonesia.) How
closely related do you think the African languages are?
(Fairly close. They all belong to the same group of African
languages called Niger-Congo; there are 4 major language
groups found in Africa. Swahili, Zulu, and Xhosa are part
of the same sub-group are spoken in Southern and Eastern
Africa. Asante is in a separate sub-group and is spoken
in Ghana.) For a map of African languages, go to http://www.uoregon.edu/~dlpayne/maasai/mahist.htm.
Note to teacher: For further information on language families, go to http://www.krysstal.com/langfams.html.
To print out word lists to compare languages of the family, go to http://www.concentric.net/~yoman1/home/words.shtml.
- Overall closure questions: How do languages travel and
change over time? (Discuss the words divergence [a language
separated over time develops differently], convergence [diffusion
amongst long-isolated languages], and replacement [when
a more dominant culture’s language replaces a less dominant
culture’s]. How do some languages appear related sometimes
when they are not really? How long do you think it takes
for some of these changes and diffusions to happen? How
does language diffusion continue today? What do you think
will eventually happen to many of these language families
and groups over time?
- For a home or class assignment, have the students as individuals
or in groups, have them draw their own maps of the world
languages discussed in class with arrows or lines connecting
similar ones. They can also create a key to go with their
maps.
- There are many different aspects of research that the students
can investigate in this area if the students are interested.
Below are listed just some of the many language websites
that I found on the internet that the students can investigate
on their own or in the classroom if there is internet access.
Materials: Enough copies of the “hello”
list and Indo-European
Family Tree for each group, scissors. Optional: outline
maps or a wall map with “post-its”, internet access.
References:
Assessment: Class discussion and language maps.
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