Teacher's Guide for CALLIOPE: The History of Writing

Uses of writing:

As a class, brainstorm as many ways as you can that we use reading and writing in everyday life. You might do this as an idea web or as a list. Some examples: business owners keeping accounts; traffic signs and street signs; menus; labels on food containers; emails; license plates . . .

Other scripts:

If there are bilingual students in your class, see if any of them want to write something on the board in another language. Have them read aloud what they have written. If the script is not Roman, try to determine if it is alphabetic (each character represents a sound), syllabic (each character represents a syllable), or logographic (each character represents a word). Even a Roman script will probably include marks we don't use in English, such as accent marks and tildes (over n's) in Spanish.

Language arts:

With the class, list letter combinations in English in which two letters make one sound, as in "sh" and "th." Then choose letters and letter combinations that can make a number of sounds, and list words in which they make each sound. (For instance, "ough": cough, enough, though, through, hiccough, plough, ought.) The class could also try to make up funny sentences using all the words together. (Ought he to cough enough and hiccough through the ploughing, though?)

The following activity may be used as:

1. A class "scavenger hunt," where each student reading through the magazine finds some answers for each item and the class puts together all the answers at the end;
2. A quiz after students have read the magazine; or,
3. As an easier quiz, have students choose answers from the sample answers below, rearranged in random order, as a matching exercise.

Find in the magazine:

• 2 Indo-European languages
• 2 syllabic scripts
• 2 Semitic languages
• 2 alphabet inventors
• 2 undeciphered scripts
• the earliest known writing system
• 2 scripts that used logograms
• a language that added characters for vowel sounds
• 2 writing implements not usually used today
• 2 materials on which people once wrote, but which you don't write on today
• 2 languages written in cuneiform
• 2 Egyptian rulers
• 2 Far Eastern languages
• 2 islands
• 2 Native American languages
• 2 countries of the Middle East
• 2 other countries of Asia
• 2 countries of Africa
• 2 countries of Europe

Challenge questions (requiring extra knowledge or research):

• 2 languages which today are used only in religious ceremonies and writings, not in everyday speech
• 2 languages that are not Semitic or Indo-European
• 2 tonal languages

Most of these questions have many possible answers that can be found in the magazine. One possible set of answers (in the order of the items above):

Indo-European: English, Russian; Syllabic: Cherokee, Amharic; Semitic: Arabic, Hebrew; Inventors: Sequoyah, Braille; Undeciphered: Meroitic, Etruscan; Earliest: cuneiform; Logograms: Egyptian, Chinese; Vowels: Greek; Implements: reed, lead stylus; Materials: papyrus, wax tablets; Written in cuneiform: Elamite, Akkadian; Rulers: Cleopatra, Ptolemy; Far East: Korean, Vietnamese; Islands: Taiwan, Crete; N.A. lang's: Olmec, Zapotec; M.E.: Iraq, Iran; Asia: Japan, Pakistan; Africa: Ethiopia, Sudan; Europe: Greece, Ireland; Religious lang's: Ge'ez, Coptic; Languages not S or I-E: Turkish, Finnish (also Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Aztec, and others) Tonal (explained p. 35): Vietnamese, Chinese

Geography and history:

On a world map, have students mark the years when different areas developed writing systems. Use the timeline on p. 4-5. (Put the Sumerians in modern Iraq; Phoenicians in Lebanon; Etruscans in Italy; Olmecs, Zapotecs, and Aztecs in Mexico; Khmer in Cambodia/Kampuchea.) Then have them add in the alphabet inventors on p. 34-36, with the places they lived and the dates when they invented alphabets for their languages. (Korea, King Sejong, 1400s; Vietnam, Alexandre de Rhodes, 1600s; Cherokee (USA), Sequoyah, 1821; France, Louis Braille, 1824)

Read p. 6, "The Earliest Writing System;" p. 7-11, "Egyptian Hieroglyphs," & p. 30-33, "The Chinese Writing System"

Discuss:

What do these three writing systems (cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and Chinese writing) have in common? (All have at least some characters which represent words.)

What other kinds of symbols have been added for clarification? (Symbols for syllables or sounds, and for classes of words)

In China, a number of "dialects" are spoken (Mandarin, Cantonese, etc.). Since the "dialects" are very different from each other, we could also call them different languages. Why, then, would it be useful for China to have a writing system where each symbol stands for a word, rather than a sound? (Speakers of different dialects see the character and pronounce it quite differently, but still understand what it means and can read what was written.)

Art:

Try one or more of these projects:

• Have students use modeling clay and some object (pencil, stick, ruler, etc.) to create different symbols that could represent words or sounds.
• Have students, using pen and paper, write a sentence, or a letter to someone, completely in pictures. Suggest that they may need to use some pictures to represent their initial sounds (i.e. a lion for "l") and build words with those pictures. Have them trade papers to see if someone else can read what they have written. (Two options: page 13 shows small tablets with "questions for the gods." Have students imagine a question that might have been asked, and try to write it in pictures. Or, create a sentence and have all students write that same sentence in pictures; see how many different possibilities there are!)
• On p. 7-8 the author says the Egyptian hieroglyphics are in the form of everyday objects. Have students look through the hieroglyphics in the article (p. 7-10) and identify as many everyday objects in the hieroglyphic symbols as they can. On page 14 they can check some of their ideas. For more on Egyptian hieroglyphics, check out:

  James Cross Giblin, The Riddle of the Rosetta Stone. New York: Harper Collins, 1990. The deciphering of the Rosetta Stone and the culture and history of ancient Egypt. Ages 10-12.

Language arts:

According to page 10, the Egyptians used pictures or symbols to distinguish between homonyms. The Chinese also do this (p. 30-31 gives an example). Homonyms are words that sound the same but have different meanings (and often different spellings in English). List some homonyms in English, such as pear/pair; row/row/roe; toe/tow. Have students create pictures to show the difference between the homonyms. For example: "row" with three parallel lines after it, as in a row of students, and "row" with a picture of an oar after it, as in row the boat.

Page 12 mentions a huge family of languages called Indo-European languages, which includes English. If you have reference sources available on languages, have students list all the languages they can find in the magazine and find out which ones are Indo-European. You may also want them to identify the languages that are Semitic, as Semitic languages are mentioned frequently (see p. 16). Have students research why linguists classify English into the Indo-European family, which also includes Russian, Spanish, and Hindi. They can try to find examples of similar words in different Indo-European languages (cognates: words from the same source), and show that a non-Indo-European language, such as Chinese or Finnish, has words that are totally different. Words such as mother, father, snow, numbers, and other everyday words are often the most similar.

Some Indo-European languages mentioned in the magazine:

Greek, Russian, Hindi, Urdu, Farsi, Hittite, Latin, Sanskrit, German, English, Dutch, French

Some Semitic languages:

Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Amharic, Phoenician, Akkadian, Amorite

Some languages from other families:

Chinese, Japanese, Cherokee, Korean, Burmese, Olmec, Zapotec, Coptic, Khmer, Vietnamese, Turkish, Uygur, Sumerian, Etruscan, Finnish, Mongolian, Aztec, Tibetan

Geography:

As a class, make a map showing where the Indo-European languages are found; it will be a very wide area! (Some other Indo-European languages not mentioned in the magazine include Kurdish, Baluchi, Armenian, Albanian, Bulgarian, Czech, Slovak, Polish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Welsh, Scots Gaelic, Irish Gaelic, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic, and Flemish.)

Possible references for the above projects:

Who Talks Funny? by Brenda S. Cox includes charts of languages and language families on pages 8 and 12 (including a diagram showing how various languages came from Indo-European) and a discussion of why these languages are related, and how linguists know they are related.

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, by David Crystal, includes a map of language families of the world (p. 294-295) and of Indo-European languages (p. 298-299), as well as information about various language groups.

The Atlas of Languages, mentioned on p. 46 of the magazine, should also give this information.

Encyclopedia Britannica has excellent articles on languages.

After reading "Were the Phoenicians the First?" (p. 15-23) and "The Greek Contribution" (p. 24-26), have students draw a flowchart or family tree showing how the Roman writing system we use today developed from the early cuneiform, hieroglyphic, and Semitic scripts. They could also include the development of other alphabets, such as Greek, Arabic, or Cyrillic. The above references may be helpful.

Discuss:

On p. 23, Dr. Daniels lists three ways of adapting a script to unwritten languages. Even in case three, however, the writing system for one language will not be exactly the same in another language. Why not? (Different languages use different sounds. A script will include letters for some sounds the second language doesn't have, and will not include letters for other sounds or distinctions, such as tones, that the first language doesn't have. No two languages use exactly the same set of sounds. So the letters will have to be adapted to the sounds of the second language. If you try to read French, Spanish, or German, without knowing the language, you may be able to approximately pronounce the words, knowing the Roman alphabet, but you will not be able to accurately pronounce them using only sounds from English.) If you have speakers of a language besides English in your class, demonstrate this. For example, have a Spanish speaker write a sentence in Spanish on the board, and have an English speaker try to read it. Then have the Spanish speaker read it correctly.

History:

Have students research:

Cyril and Methodius, who invented the script that became Cyrillic (p. 22): What was their purpose? What languages today use the Cyrillic script? Why do some languages that are not Slavic, like Russian, also use this script? (Because of the influence of the former Soviet Union)

Ataturk, who brought a new script into use in Turkey: Turkey used a script based on Arabic and now uses a Roman script. Why did Ataturk make this change? How did he do it? (He sometimes went to schools himself and demonstrated the new alphabet, though he was the president of the country!) How did the Roman alphabet have to be adapted to fit Turkish, which is not an Indo-European language and includes a number of vowel sounds English doesn't have? (It uses many diacritics; additional marks on top of or under the letters.) See FACES^®, May 1995, for articles on Ataturk and the Turkish language.

Have students read a book on Sequoyah or on Louis Braille, and report on how the difficult circumstances of the man's life led him to develop a new alphabet which became helpful to many people. (Sequoyah and the Cherokee Alphabet by Robert Cwiklik and Louis Braille by Margaret Davidson are good choices.)

p. 37-39, "Writing it Down"

Ask students: What do you think will be the next writing implement? Are pens becoming obsolete, as some people think? Draw or describe what you think will be the next way people "write."

p. 42-44 "Ancient Writing Alive and Well"

Art:

For further illustrations, you may want to show the class the following books. They are written for younger students, but may be enjoyable for older students as well.

Illuminations, by Jonathan Hunt, is a picture book using calligraphy and pictures to illustrate medieval life.

The Illuminated Alphabet by Theodore Menten is a coloring book with beautiful medieval illuminated letters for each letter of the alphabet. Students could color these and spell out their names.

In the Papal Bull on p. 44, have students list letters they can read easily, and letters which are difficult to recognize.

Home

Back

Print

Updated: 2/9/10 05:20 am
Log In