Language is Genetic

I read an article today that states....Hu­mans’ clos­est ex­tinct rel­a­tives, the Ne­an­der­thals, pos­sessed a key gene var­i­ant be­lieved to be re­lat­ed to our abil­ity to speak, re­search­ers have found. The dis­co­very, they said, shows that this muta­t­ion arose much ear­li­er than sci­en­tists had sus­pected, and raises at least the pos­si­bil­ity that Ne­an­der­thals could talk. “From the point of view of this gene, there is no rea­son to think that Ne­an­der­thals would not have had the abil­ity for lan­guage,” said Jo­han­nes Krause of the Max Planck In­sti­tute for Ev­o­lu­tion­ary An­thro­po­l­ogy in Leip­zig, Ger­ma­ny. (read the rest of the article here: CaveTalk)

Reading the article got me thinking about language and how it came to be. Language had to be invented. Early man had to invent words for the things around them and then teach that word to others. When different groups of people in different parts of the world came up with different words for the same thing, then different languages came into existance. In the fun activity below you and your brightest kidz invent their own language. You can use the example offered to start, then create your own unique language.

Inventing Language

Spell out each word you say. For each consonant, you add "ONG" to it. For each vowel, you say it as it is.(with the exception of the letter "Y") For example, if you wanted to say, "Bradley", it would be said like this: "Bong Rong A Dong Long E Yong"

Once you get the hang of it, you can go really fast! Pretty soon, they will want you to say ALL of their names in your new language!

Now, let your class decide what "class language" they want to have. Write all ideas up on the board. Some of the ideas may include adding "ang", "ing", "song" "oo" or "echo" to their letters. The possibilities are endless.

Model for your students what each one of their ideas would sound like when put to words and letters. Have the class vote on which ending they like best.

My class ended up using "ecko" for ending letters. Then they came up with a new name for their language. They called it, "Ecko Gecko" with their class language symbol being the gecko lizard! It worked really well! Using this language can be a fun spelling activity as well with the spelling words of the week!
I also make sure that each student gets with a partner and practices with one another. Then they got into groups of five students and they had to come up with a sentence of 5 words so that each student was in charge of a word. Then each group came to the front of the class and performed their sentence in "Ecko Gecko". The rest of the class had to guess what sentence they were saying. For example:

I like to play soccer.
I Lecko I Kecko E Tecko O Pecko Lecko A Yecko
Secko O Cecko Cecko E Recko!

Activity from From That Teaching Idea