During my course "Get Finternational" I have visited a workshop called "Fun the languages', which is implied that some students will teach others their native language. I have already been to the same workshop, but I liked it so much that I wanted to attend it again, because it was really fun to know some phrases in foreign languages, but this time everything was completely different.
There were only 8 of us who came, so we decided not to divide in groups and to try to pay attention to every language we had. Firstly, we took random photos and out task was to explain what is in the picture in English and then name the objects like they are in your native language. My friend has a picture of cats, she told everyone that in Russian there are a lot of words for say "cat" and among them there is a word "kisa" and how surprised we were when a teacher from Finland told us that in Finnish cat is also kissa! It felt so strange how so different languages can have similar words.
Then my friend and I started to acquaint others with Russian language. We showed our alphabet and tried to teach everybody our tongue twister. It was hard in a way to explain the meaning of the tongue twister and the rules of reading to foreigners, but it was totally fun!
Next, a boy from Turkey acquainted us with his language a bit. He taught us how to say thank you (teşekkürler, so beautiful, isn’t it?) and then showed us a video about a village in Turkey where people connect through long distance by whistle! It’s fantastic! Also, I knew that the word tea is the same in Russian and in Turkish – chai, except from that chai in Turkish means black tea and in Russian it means any tea. Now I know where the word chai in our language came from.
To say it honestly, I liked this meeting much more than the previous, because this time I felt like we all are closer and everyone is included in the process. Maybe it would be better if every “Fun with languages” workshop was like that, because the feeling of unity is amazing.