Reflection #2

1) Translate the word “water” from English to at least 15 languages available in Google Translate. Do not choose 20 languages that are familiar to you. Try to choose from a broad range of languages (and writing systems). You can also make use of the “listen” button. Write the water words below. As you complete this task, begin to reflect upon the following questions.

a. Does the word look/sound the same in some languages?

b. What are some patterns (ie forms of water) you see (or hear) repeatedly? Highlight some of the forms of “water” that appear repeatedly.

1. Albanian: Ujë

2. Catalan: Aigua

3. Croatian: Voda

4. Filipino: Tubig

5. Finnish: Vesi

6. Hausa: Ruwa

7. German: Wasser

8. Irish: Uisce

9. Italian: Acqua

10. Maltese: Ilma

11. Polish: Woda

12. Romanian: Apă

13. Slovak: Voda

14. Tatar: Cy

15. Turkman: Suw

16. Xhosa: Amanzi

17. Zulu: Amanzi

Some of the words look similar throughout the languages. Some of the words are similar in the spelling but are not the exact same. The ones that sound like the English version to me are Croatian, German, Polish and Slovak. It may not be the same spelling, but they sound the most similar.

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2) This question builds on what we learned about writing systems in Andrea’s video on Writing Systems. For a refresher, skim read this page: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/types.htm Answer these questions by looking at the different versions of the word “water”

a) English uses a writing system called the Roman Alphabet. What other languages use the same writing system as English?

i) French

ii) Spanish

iii) German

iv) Portuguese

v) Dutch

vi) Turkish

vii) Vietnamese

viii) Bahasa Malay

ix) Bahasa Indonesia

x) Tagalog

xi) Chinese (phonetic script)

xii) Japanese (phonetic script)

b) Which languages appear to share other types of writing systems? What are these writing systems called?

i) Abjads/Consonant Alphabets (Hebrew & Arabic)

ii) Syllabic Alphabets

c) What are some characteristics of each writing system (refer to the Omniglot website.)

i) independent letters for consonants and may indicate vowels using some of the consonant letters and/or with diacritics

ii) the main element is the syllable. Diacritic symbols are used to change or mute the inherent vowel, and separate vowel letters may be used when vowels occur at the beginning of a syllable or on their own.

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My overview of this activity:

Learning language families and writing systems are helpful as a teacher because you can connect words to the English language easier. When there is a student that is added to your classroom that may not speak fluent English; you can begin connecting to their native language. It will make the process easier to tackle and the child will not feel as overwhelmed if you are understanding them in the slight way. Knowing that each language descends from one main ancestor language helps connect that everyone is equal. In a future English classroom, I would bring in a lesson like this to look over one common words. Each student would look up on language and work together to group them. In the end the meaning is all the same but just may look different. Words are like humans; we may be made up of a larger background but in the end, we are all equal and the meaning behind us is the same.