Anyone teach a language survey?

[Petrichor]

I want my second grader to become familiar with other languages. So my plan is to hold a weekly language exploration class. I was thinking to go about 12-15 weeks and then start learning a new language (Chinese or Spanish most likely).  

 

I was thinking to present one language per week. The language and the main countries where it is spoken, show examples of the written language, and listen to a song or video or other example of the language. 

 

Has anyone done anything like this? Any pointers? 

 

 

[CadenceSophia]

Are you mostly planning to stick to main world languages? 3 months seems like a long time for each language if you don't plan on actually learning it. If I were just doing a survey, I'd think maybe 3 weeks per language? Otherwise what is the point? You would only cover 3 languages in a year out of the hundreds and thousands that exist.

 

I plan to do something like this when things settle down. We do it a bit but not formally. I'm a bit of a language study geek and I like to talk to my kids about the politics of minority languages, show examples of the different speech sounds used around the world (including clicks which are always awesome), and teach the (debatable) difference between dialect and separate language. I am hoping to include lists of minority languages with our study of geography and cover the politics and writing systems more formally some time..

 

Thanks to and Wikipedia, you will have tons of resources available.

 

Edit: Sorry I don't know if I understood your first post, and even after re-reading I am unclear. You want to learn about 12-15 languages and THEN pick one to study for real? That makes more sense than what I was thinking but forgive me if I have it wrong both times.

Edited December 26, 2016 by CadenceSophia

[Rosie_0801]

No, but I occasionally buy dd bilingual language books. She gets all excited about them, and copies words into text messages to her uncle, lol.

 

If you're going to do something like this, I think a small kid would get more out of exploring different alphabets than different languages. 

[Petrichor]

Are you mostly planning to stick to main world languages? 3 months seems like a long time for each language if you don't plan on actually learning it. If I were just doing a survey, I'd think maybe 3 weeks per language? Otherwise what is the point? You would only cover 3 languages in a year out of the hundreds and thousands that exist.

 

I plan to do something like this when things settle down. We do it a bit but not formally. I'm a bit of a language study geek and I like to talk to my kids about the politics of minority languages, show examples of the different speech sounds used around the world (including clicks which are always awesome), and teach the (debatable) difference between dialect and separate language. I am hoping to include lists of minority languages with our study of geography and cover the politics and writing systems more formally some time..

 

Thanks to and Wikipedia, you will have tons of resources available.

 

Edit: Sorry I don't know if I understood your first post, and even after re-reading I am unclear. You want to learn about 12-15 languages and THEN pick one to study for real? That makes more sense than what I was thinking but forgive me if I have it wrong both times.

Yes to your edit.

 

I'm looking at 1 week per language, and only giving each language one official day each week.

[Petrichor]

No, but I occasionally buy dd bilingual language books. She gets all excited about them, and copies words into text messages to her uncle, lol.

 

If you're going to do something like this, I think a small kid would get more out of exploring different alphabets than different languages. 

 

Thanks for the suggestion. My list of languages to cover got way too long, and this suggestion makes it easy to pare down the list. And I keep forgetting that he still has so many years for learning. There's no need to teach everything THIS year! 

[CadenceSophia]

Since it is only for a second grader, I'd stick to choosing from the list of world and supra-regional languages. That cuts you back to a little over 15. You could cover all the romances languages over a few weeks instead of entirely one at a time (honestly they will sound really similar to an untrained ear getting one class of exposure).

Save one week to talk about how there are many many many minority languages and dialects that need protection all over the world. (We have a Russian dialect dying just two hours down the road from us, Ninilchik Russian and so many of the languages of Native Alaskans and other Native Americans are really struggling).

I think a 7 year old might also find it interesting how some countries have a language of instruction for school that is none of the children's native language.

[Loesje22000]

We just learned some typical children things in several languages:

To count to 20

Colors

Day's of the week

The word for 'hide and seek'

The song 'head, shoulders,....'

'I lost my mom, my name is ....'

The song 'happy birthday' or something similar.

[visitor]

DS told me that he wanted to learn Chinese as well . I really dont know were to start and how to teach him because we are not Chinese :) 

 

But we learn French, Arabic , Dutch and English. We talk Arabic and Dutch at home, But I also read to them in English and talk to them during our Engish time daily...

 

For French they work with Skoldo . 

[deBij]

I just came across this book which could introduce different languages nicely.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Book-Languages-Talk-around-World/dp/1771471557/ref=sr_1_12?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492620398&sr=1-12&keywords=talk+around+the+world

 

along with an intro language app like this one

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wideeyed.helloatlas&hl=en

 

I put it on my wish list but we are already working on Dutch, Latin and French and I would like to expand other areas rather than add another language (until they are old enough to pursue it on their own).

[wintermom]

I took a year of Ukrainian, which uses the Cyrillic alphabet. It was really interesting learning the different sounds and letters. A few years later I was helping my grandfather sort his stamps and I could read the words on the stamps from Russia and the Ukraine. It was so cool to be able to do this. Having a real-life reason to read words in the Cyrillic alphabet made all those hours of work worthwhile.

 

You could collect various tangible objects with words in the alphabets your teach your dd to provide a similar motivation and learning experience. Stamps, coins, paper money, pictures of street and store signs, websites, etc.  Even when you can't actually visit the countries that use these languages, you can bring them to life in your own home. 

Edited April 22, 2017 by wintermom

[Petrichor]

I took a year of Ukrainian, which uses the Cyrillic alphabet. It was really interesting learning the different sounds and letters. A few years later I was helping my grandfather sort his stamps and I could read the words on the stamps from Russia and the Ukraine. It was so cool to be able to do this. Having a real-life reason to read words in the Cyrillic alphabet made all those hours of work worthwhile.

 

You could collect various tangible objects with words in the alphabets your teach your dd to provide a similar motivation and learning experience. Stamps, coins, paper money, pictures of street and store signs, websites, etc.  Even when you can't actually visit the countries that use these languages, you can bring them to life in your own home. 

That's a really cool idea, thank you!