Celebrating languages with the Commonwealth Games 2014

Celebrating languages with the Commonwealth Games

What a wonderful opportunity to allow young language learners the opportunity to listen and practise languages that are less known and spoken by some people within the Commonwealth.It's marvellous opportunity to share the diversity of languages!

Here in Warrington we are 20 miles from Wales and just across the Irish Sea from the Isle of Man.The Commonwealth Games take place in 2014 in Glasgow so let’s firstly share languages close to home!

Why not start with Peter Rabbit told in Scottish?

The The tale o Peter Kinnen

Listen to the story and see how much the children can understand?

Share with children the comparison of words in Scottish and English , taking examples from this chart. Can the children guess what the words might mean before you share with them the English meaning?

Teach the children some simple Gaelic using language and support from the website Gaelic4parents.
Can your children identify athletes at the Commonwealth Games that will be representing Scotland?

Let's learn  our numbers our colours and our simple greetings and questions in welsh . Certainly for the children in our network that we work with this makes sense.They have teachers who speak Welsh and most probably takes out at the seaside on the North Wales Coast. Indeed we take our children to the North Wales coast for school trips and holidays.

Take a look at this learn-welsh website for all sorts of sound files and activities!

Can your children identify athletes at the Commonwealth games that will be representing Wales?

It's just a short (well truthfully four hour) ferry sail from Liverpool to the Isle of Man , but we can fly there in 30 minutes too! 

Do your class realise that the island has its own language of Manx?Why not watch the You tube clip above and practise some simple Manx with the class?

Can you children identify athletes from the Isle of Man that will be representing the island at the Commonwealth Games.

Let's go further afield! 

It's definitely a chance to go further afield and to explore the sounds and script of languages that our children may never have heard of or be aware of.Let's take them to Tonga and listen to the sounds of Tongan and look at the script of the language. Here is the Tongan Omniglot website link you will need for the sound files and script.

You could explore the language of Brunei on the same website: Malay or learn more about a language nearer to home Maltese.

Finally there is never a bad time to practise with your classes the New Zealand Hakka which the children will no doubt see at the start of the Rugby Sevens matches in which New Zealand participate.Use the BBC Sports Academy website page to access both the words and the actions to the Hakka.