До Європейського дня мов

Teacher:  The European Day of Languages is celebrated on the 26 of September. It aims to represent the great variety of languages and show the importance of  lifelong language learning for everyone. Why not look at the world languages and find out some new facts you haven`t heard before. So, let`s start.

Wise men say that people like to build walls, not bridges. Their languages are also walls separating them. Let`s try to turn languages into a bridge, not a wall.

Today we have got some experts on different sciences, who want to share the most interesting information  with you about languages.

Pupil 1: Hello. I want to tell you about Linguistics. Linguistics is the study of language - how it is put together and how it functions. Phonetics, Morphology, Historical Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Syntax, Semantics. Linguistics is the study of all of this. And every nation wants to know more about its native language. Let`s try to count them. Name the language and the country where it is spoken. For example: Italian is spoken in Italy.

Pupils take the cards with flags and pin them on the map.

German is spoken in Germany.

2 Teacher: You have done it very well. Now look at the map and say which languages are spoken in North America and in South America.

Pupil: Spanish and Portugese  are spoken in South America.

Pupil: English, French and Spanish are spoken in north America.

Teacher: That`s right. How do you think why?

Pupil: Many years ago people from Europe came to America and brought their languages.

Teacher: How clever you are.  Look at the blackboard and say if these words are similar: apple, apfel, яблуко? They have got the same root ABL. And we can say these words are relatives as the languages they belong to are. English, German and Ukrainian belong to one language family. And listen to our expert on language families.

Pupil: I am an expert on language families. A language family is a group of languages that share a same common parent language or proto language. Most of the world`s languages are known  to be related to others. That`s why there are so many words which are understandable even if we don`t know a language. I propose you to watch a film about language families.

Video.

Teacher: Now look at the picture of a tree on your desks. Fill in the names of language families next to the Ukrainian equivalent.

Pupils do the task.

Teacher: let`s do the same on our wallpaper. It is an unusual tree. It demonstrates how languages develop.

 The picture of a tree. Cards ANATOLIAN,CELTIC, ROMANIC, GERMANIC, SLAVONIC, BALTIC, IRANIAN, INDIAN, GREEK, LATIN, SPANISH, ITALIAN, FRENCH, ROMANIAN,DUTCH, GERMAN, ENGLISH, DANISH, SWEDISH, ICELANDISH,NORWEGIAN, LITHUANIAN, LATVIAN, UKRAINIAN, RUSSIAN, POLISH, CHECK, BULGARIAN,

Teacher: you could understand the words because they have the same roots as in your native language. Let`s listen to the next expert.

Pupil: hello. I am an expert on connections between languages. It is interesting to get to know that every language is a mixture of languages. For example, English is a mixture of Danish, German, Norwegian and Swedish words. MAN, DAY,WIFE, FRIEND,CHILD, WATER, WORK,ETC.

The words COUNTRY, NATION, PEOPLE, LEGAL, STATE, ETC. come to English from French.

There are also many Latin and Greek words in English. TELEPHONE, TELEVISION, MICROSCOPE, ETC.

Pupil. Hello. I am an expert on etymology. Etymology is a science which studies the origin of the words. It also demonstrates the connections between languages. I have got cards with Ukrainian words and some information on how they appeared in our language. Read them and translate into English.

 Pupil:      АБЗАЦ-від нім. Absetzen “ залишати”. Ukrainian word АБЗАЦ comes from German absetzen.

Teacher : as you can see Ukrainian is also a mixture of different languages. Let`s look at our wallpaper. We have produced it during our lesson . tell us what was interesting  to get to know for you.

I want to sum up all information we have learned today and say that languages don`t separate people, they connect them. The knowledge of languages will help you to be a part of the world.

Song. We are the world.