Water in 15 different languages:
Does the word look/sound the same in languages?
Looking at the spelling of the word, there are not a lot of similarities aside from the spelling in Dutch being the same as the spelling in English. Listening to word being pronounced it is easy to detect that the only ones pronounced the same were Polish and Ukrainian both being pronounced as “voda”.
What are some patterns (ie forms of water) you see or hear repeatedly?
I did not find many patterns in the spelling of the words. I was able to detect a pattern when listening to the words. In Danish, Dutch, Icelandic, Norwegian, Polish, Samoan, and Ukrainian they begin the word with a “v” sound like in the word “vote”.
English uses a writing system called the Roman Alphabet. What other languages use the same writing system as English?
Some of the most common languages that use the Roman Alphabet are French, Dutch, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Catalan, Polish, Turkish, Samoan, Vietnamese, Icelandic, Norwegian, Italian, Danish, Afrikaans and many more.
Which languages appear to share other types of writing systems? What are these writing systems called?
Another type of writing system is have looked at is the Bengali script used in the Bangla language. This writing system has also been used to write Sanskrit. This is the most widely adopted writing system in the world with over 265 million people using it.
What are some characteristics of each writing system (refer to the Omniglot website.)
The characteristics of the alphabet is that they “are sets of letters that represent consonants and vowels” (Ager, 2021). “In some languages, each letter or combination of letters represents one sound, while in others, letters might represent a variety of sounds or the same sounds can be written in different ways” (Ager, 2021). For example, in English the words ship, machine, and pressure have similar sounds written in different ways.
Characteristics of the abjads/consonant alphabets is that they “have independent letters for consonants” and use some of the consonant letters to indicate vowels (Ager, 2021). Full vowel indication is used in Arabic and Hebrew for specific contexts, mainly religious and children’s books. Syllabic alphabets are writing systems that mainly use symbols. Syllable are built up of consonants which all inherent a vowel (ka, kha, ga, gha). Syllabaries are “symbols representing syllables” (Ager, 2021). They are often made up of a consonant plus a vowel or a single vowel. Lastly, there is semanto-phonetic writing systems that “represent both sound and meaning” (Ager, 2021). Under this writing system there is also pictograms and logograms, ideograms, compound characters. This writing system is used in the Chinese language.
How can the language awareness you developed today about language families and writing systems help you as a future teacher?
The language awareness I have developed from this activity will help in many ways as a future teacher. I see our world as getting more diverse with new people coming in, with new people comes the chance of being exposed to new languages. As a teacher it is our responsibility to provide information that will allow children to develop and strive in life. It is never a guarantee that every student coming into my future classroom will speak the same language, but it is up to me to provide the students with techniques to support them in adapting to the language of the classroom. In order for me to be able to provide the best techniques for the students, this activity will come into play. I will be able to see how their first language is similar to English and what aspects of the language can be derived from English. Although to understand each other fully I feel as though we should connect on language, I also feel it is important to encourage the use of their first in the classroom. Not only does this help the individual, it also helps the other students, it exposing them to new languages and encourages multilingualism in the classroom. Having language awareness is important and necessary for becoming a great teacher and I have a lot of work to develop the language awareness needed. I strive to become a teacher that encourages different languages in the classroom and presents language awareness.
References
Ager, S. (1998-2021). Types of Writing Sytems. https://www.omniglot.com/writing/types.htm#abjads