Unterrichtsmaterialien

This activity makes the pupils aware of the evolution of languages. It shows that words are constantly borrowed from other languages and that in different languages, they can be related to each other.
The teacher begins by saying that once there was a language called Indo-European and explains how the people who spoke this language settled elsewhere and changed their language over time. The class is
invited to divide into small groups. Each group receives a different poster. Then, the groups are supposed to have small conversations in 'their' language. The teacher talks about borrowings by naming Slovene and German as an example. The German group is given a poster saying 'Teppich' and the Slovene group receives a poster saying 'Tepih'.

Afterwards, the pupils are asked whether the Slovenian word for carpet 'Preproga' and the German word 'Teppich' seemed to be related.

For the second task, the teacher provides books in different languages, each labelled with the name of the language they are written in. Moreover, there is a table for every pupil with the word 'book' in two different languages. Firstly, every pupils receives a book and is asked to find a classmate who has a similar word on his/her book and join him/her. Finally, they discuss whether different words from different languages are related to each other.

Duration: 2x45