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← Old Words, Read Aloud

Old Words, Read Aloud

Four short lessons on where English words come from: the old layer and the French one, the roots inside long words, one myth told two ways, and one line in two translations.

Spark & Whetstone · sparkwhetstone.org/learn/old-words-read-aloud · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Answers are at the end, so you can try each question first.

Lesson 1. Cow and beef

English has layers. The oldest everyday words — house, bread, sheep, cow — come from Old English. After the Norman Conquest of 1066, French became the language of the people in charge, and many French words came in.

That is why the animal in the field has an old English name (cow, pig, sheep) while the meat on the table often has a French one (beef, pork, mutton): the farmers spoke English, the people being served spoke French.

CognateForge shows these families side by side, including the words English shares with German, Spanish and other languages.

Question. Which pair follows the farm-and-table pattern?

  1. Bread and butter
  2. Cat and kitten
  3. Pig and pork

Say it back. In your own words: why does English have two words for some animals and their meat?

Lesson 2. Roots inside long words

Many long English words are built from Greek and Latin parts. "Tele" means far, "graph" means writing, "phone" means sound: a telegraph writes far away, a telephone sounds far away.

Knowing a few parts lets a reader take a long word apart: "photograph" is light-writing, "biography" is life-writing. It turns a hard word into a puzzle.

Read a long word aloud slowly and look for a part you know. Ask what the rest might mean before you look it up.

Question. "Bio" means life and "logy" means the study of something. What is biology?

  1. A machine that measures life
  2. Writing about a life
  3. The study of living things

Say it back. In your own words: how do word parts help with a long word?

Lesson 3. One myth, two tellings

Old stories were told many times before anyone wrote them down, so most myths come in more than one version. In one telling the hero wins by strength; in another, by a trick.

Reading two tellings side by side shows that a teller makes choices: what to leave out, whom to blame, how it ends. That is a reading skill, and children enjoy finding the differences.

MythPals and MythForge put two tellings of the same story next to each other. Read both aloud, then ask which one you would tell.

Question. Two tellings of a myth end differently. What does that tell a reader?

  1. The myth was made up recently, so it changes.
  2. One of the two tellings must be a mistake.
  3. Each teller made choices about the story.

Say it back. In your own words: what can you learn by reading two tellings of the same myth?

Lesson 4. One line, two translations

A translator chooses words, just as a writer does. Put two English translations of the same line side by side and they will differ: one closer to the original words, one closer to how English would say it.

Reading aloud helps you hear the difference. Ask which one sounds more natural, and which one keeps more of the original.

There is rarely a single right translation. Comparing two is a good way to notice what words do.

Question. Two translations of one line are different. Which question helps most when you compare them?

  1. Which one is longer, and so must say more of the original?
  2. What did each one keep, and what did it change?
  3. Which one uses the harder, more grown-up words?

Say it back. In your own words: why can two translations both be good?

At the table: The word family tree

Players: a grown-up and a reader of 9 or older. You'll need: a large sheet of paper and a dictionary that shows where words come from.

  1. Write one word in the middle: "graph".
  2. Each finds a word that contains it.
  3. Write each new word on a branch.
  4. Read the tree aloud and say what each word means.

Answers

  1. Pig and pork — "Pig" is the old English farm word and "pork" comes from French "porc", the word on the table. The other pairs are both English.
  2. The study of living things — Bio plus logy is the study of life. Writing about a life would be biography, with "graph".
  3. Each teller made choices about the story. — A retold story always passes through a teller who chooses. Neither version is a mistake; both are tellings.
  4. What did each one keep, and what did it change? — Each translator keeps some things and changes others. Length and hard words tell you little about that.