 | ||||||||
 | LOGIN | |  |  | | |||
 | ||||||||
 |
| 11/21/2008 |  | |||||
| ||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Language Mysteries
This unit should take 2-4 hours, depending on time and interest. It is designed for intermediate level students age 14 and above. Objectives Students will: Materials to Print Activities Activity I: World Languages (20 minutes) Write the word languages on the board. Ask students to brainstorm a list of countries. Write the names of languages that students say on the board. Ask students what they think the most spoken languages in the world are (1. Chinese, Mandarin 885 millon; 2. Spanish 332 millon; English, 322 million; 4. Bengali 189 millon; Hindi, 182 millon) For more about where languages are spoken, visit Infoplease. Hand out copies of Printout I, and have students read the words. Ask them to say a couple of sentences about each language: where it's spoken, what family it belongs to (Germanic, Romance, Celtic, Slavic, Indic, etc), whether they know a few words in that language, etc. Have students divide the languages by continent, according to where they are spoken. If students would like to know the name of other languages, help them. For more information, you can visit Languages. Activity II: Languages Change (15 minutes) Ask students whether they know any words in English that come from their language or whether they know which ancient languages some of the English words come from. For example, from Greek (geometry, astronomy, grammar, dialogue, tragedy, theater), from Latin (gravity, item, index). Brainstorm ways in which languages change (as a result of trade and travel, new technologies demand new words, new words are invented as a result of books, movies, etc., bad communication in old times resulted in different dialects, languages take "loan words" from other languages, etc). Discuss the reasons why some of the words mentioned before may have become part of the English language. Activity III: Origin of Words (20 minutes) Write the word etymology on the board and ask students what they think it is (the study of the origin of words. Etymology studies words, their roots and how the sounds have evolved over the time). Tell them that, for instance, the word etymology comes from the ancient Greek language. It's composed of two parts: the Greek word atymon, which means "early form of a word," and the Greek word logia, which means "study." Combined, these two parts are "the study of early forms of words." Other examples to mention in class are: Hippopotamus: in Ancient Greek the word hippos means horse, and potamus means river. Therefore "hippopotamus" means "river horse." Malaria: comes from medieval Italian, in which mal means "bad" and aria means "air." The "bad air" was believed to cause fever. Travel: comes from the French travail which means "work." Linguists argue that this is because, at one time, traveling entailed a lot of work: planning the trip, learning the language and customs, etc. Hand out copies of printout II and have students try to guess the answers to the quiz. Share the results, (without giving them the correct answers!) and ask students to tell you why they chose their answers. Activity IV: Reading: Etymology (25 minutes) Hand out copies of Printout IV and read the text in class. One by one, students can check the answers to the quiz. Discuss the results. (Answers: 1. true; 2. false; 3. true; 4. false; 5. true; 6. true; 7 true; 8. false; 9 true; 10 true; 11. true; 12. true; 13. false; 14. false; 15. false) Activity V: Your Name (30 minutes - 2 days) If you have access to the Internet, do this activity in class. If not, it can be assigned to students as homework. Ask students whether they know that the name Stephen comes from the Greek Stephanoes, an early Christian martyr stoned to death; or that Neil comes from the Gaelic name Niall, which possibly means "passionate" or "cloud." Ask students whether they know what their names mean. If they do, have them share it with the class. If they don't, help them find out the equivalent of their name in English. Then, visit the page Behindthename to find out the etymology of their name. Share the results in class. |