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Originally developed by David Grossman. Adapted from "Demystifying the Chinese Language," in Communication, Number Three in a Series of K-12 Guides. New York: Center for Global Perspectives, 1977. pp 27-43.
Secondary
The notion of language and how it is derived or formed is a possible way to introduce students to the universality of words, their derivation and meaning. This activity includes a discovery project designed to alleviate the sense of strangeness which people often have in their first encounter with people who speak or write another language. It focuses on the Chinese written language. The students will have an opportunity to decipher Chinese characters and to theorize about how this communication system may have developed.
The origins of a language are very hard to discern. Since the students have always commanded a language, they generally do not perceive their language as an essential, still evolving, tool which man has developed. Often students, without serious examination, conclude that their language is better or much simpler to comprehend than other languages. They sometimes feel that people who speak a different language are, for that reason, very different from themselves and that it would be impossible to achieve mutual understanding.
The goal of this activity is to develop an awareness of the ways that a language develops, and to become aware of Chinese as a working and workable language-not a set of exotic and mystifying symbols and sounds.
The progress indicators cited reflect desirable end goals. Teachers should be prepared to use a wide variety of observational, testing and authentic achievement evaluation measures in judging the progress of students.
By directly experiencing several exercises dealing with the origins of language, students will demonstrate their capacity to recognize that different languages have different structures while dealing with the same subjects by t ranslating Chinese ideographs. An exercise in translation will also show that all languages are designed to communicate information in the present and over time, for languages are in a constant state of change. This exercise will also allow students to examine the idea that familiarity with a language will be instrumental in reducing misunderstanding and the sense of strangeness.
The ability of the students to analyze and decipher these new word combinations is not important. What counts is their understanding that language is a communication system which has base commonalities with other languages.
In discussing these examples, the teacher can point out that some systems, e.g., Morse code, Braille, etc., are based directly on the English alphabet. Others are based on a correspondence between ideas and symbols. Examples of the latter include pictographs, hieroglyphs, etc. You introduce students to symbolic or ideographic written language, by initially asking them to take the concept of "river" and communicate this in some way without using words (body language, sounds, and written symbols are all possible alternatives). You should have several volunteers demonstrate their ideas to the rest of the class.
After these introductory illustrations, divide the class into small groups of five or six students each. Give each group a single word which is a simple concrete object such as "horse," "table" or "house" and a single word which expresses an emotion, such as "anger" or "agreement." Ask them to agree in their small groups upon a written symbol for the object or feeling. Have a representative from each group display its symbols to the members of the class, who will then attempt to decipher their meanings.
Distribute Handouts 17A and 17B. Ask the students to collectively decipher Handout 17B with the assistance of Handout 17A. Each group should offer their answers and discuss their reasoning.
Most likely, various oral and visual forms of communication were used by students in the above "river" exercise. Other types of systems which students or the teacher might bring up include: body language (kinesics); Trappist monks' gesture language; semaphores; smoke signals; Morse code; football referee's gestures; sign language; Pig Latin; Braille; Esperanto/Interlingua; drum language; and whistling language (Mazateco Indians), etc. A more complex form of relationships among pictures, symbols and sounds is the rebus. A rebus is the representation of words by pictures of objects whose names resemble syllables of the intended words. An example of this (based on English phonetics) is: (picture of a) bee + (picture of a) leaf = belief.
Debrief the students by asking them to discuss the relationship of individual forms of language with the universal substance of language. Stress the way in which language comprehension can be such a strong and positive force for global understanding.You could conduct a similar exercise using Native American ideographic language as a follow-up check on student understanding.
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