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New Language Boom
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- Parent Category: Lower-Intermediate News Lessons
- Category: Education Lessons
- Written by Chris Cotter
People learn languages all of the time and for many different reasons. For example, you may study English for a different reason than your peers. But have you ever considered creating a new language?
There has been an increase in made-up languages recently because of "Lord of the Rings" and other fantasy movies and books. There are websites, discussion boards, and chat rooms that teach people how to create a language, and other sites that share new languages, and even sites that have people collaborate together to make new languages.
It takes a lot of time and energy to develop a new language. A person has to think about grammar rules, vocabulary, word order, and so on. There's also rhythm and intonation when the language is spoken. If the language is invented for non-humans in a movie or book, how does the biology of the creature change the sound? How does the language link to the culture of the people who speak it? All of these points are important, so even a simple language can take years to finish.
Although people create languages for many reasons, these new languages don't have the same sticking power of real languages like English or Japanese. At the moment, only the artificial language Esperanto has been around for any length of time. Created in the 19th century for people to easily speak internationally, there are now about two million speakers.
Preview some of the lesson material:
Brainstorm: Brainstorm with a partner(s) words and ideas associated with "language" for 2 minutes. Spend another 5 minutes or less discussing the words and ideas together.
True or False? : Guess (before the article) or answer (after the article) whether the sentence is true or false. If false, correct the sentence.
- People learn languages for many different reasons.
- The Internet has raised people's interest in creating languages.
- It's quite easy to create a new language.
- Esperanto has more than one million speakers worldwide.
- Esperanto has been around since the 1800s.
post-Comprehension: Talk about the following questions in pairs/groups. Remember to support your answers!
- Would you want to create a new language? Why/not?
- Would you want to learn a made-up language? Why/not?
- How would you describe your native language? How about English?
- The article says that language represents the culture of the people who speak it.
- Do you think a made-up language could ever replace a natural language?
Google Search: Type "language" into Google. Look at the websites, and/or read additional articles on this topic. Discuss or write an essay about your findings.
