March 5 - 9, 2018
This is a nationally recognized week dedicated to the promotion and appreciation of World Languages and the importance and benefits of being multilingual.
This year's theme is “LANGUAGES LEAD US ON A PATH TO UNDERSTANDING OTHER CULTURES”.
Here is a list of activities that we will be doing in order to promote and celebrate World Language Week:
- "Guess the Mystery Language": Students from various countries will say a greeting during the community meeting announcements and students/homerooms have to guess what language is being spoken.
- Language fact of the day put out on CPS social media sites
- I speak, I use ASL...": Staff members wear badges listing the languages they speak.
- World Reading Challenge: Travel the world via a book! CRLS library will have a selection of books on display where each book is set in a different country. The book selections are related to different countries in a number of ways: some are set or have characters from a certain country, some reflect the local culture of a given country, and some are written by notable authors from a specific country.
- World Games: A game corner will be set up in the CRLS Library with games from different countries.
- Food services will create menu items that highlight a different culture during WL week.
Language Facts
- There are 2,700 languages with over 7,000 individual dialects spoken around the world today. The most widely spoken languages are Chinese, Spanish, English, and Hindi, in that order. Chinese, the most spoken language around the world, has over 50,000 characters. But you only need to know 2,000 of those characters to be able to read the newspaper. Accents, a staple in many languages, can also be found in sign language.
- Every two weeks, another language dies. Or, perhaps, a dialect. There are over 231 completely extinct languages and 2,400 of the world’s languages are considered to be in danger of dying out.
- The Bible is the most widely translated book available in 2,454 different languages. Pinnochio is a close second. But the world’s most translated author is Agatha Christie.
- Learning a second language can make you smarter. A number of scientists agree that becoming polyglot can boost your brainpower. Other studies also suggest that speaking more than one language can help to slow down the aging process of the mind.
- The United States has no official language. Nearly two-thirds of people who speak a language other than English at home speak Spanish (37.6 million). The third most-spoken language is Chinese (2.9 million), followed by Tagalog (1.6 million), Vietnamese (1.4 million), French (1.3 million), German (1.1 million), and Korean (1.1 million).
Some interesting facts on World Languages curated from this website.