Hello world! European Day of Languages 2008

Hello world! European Day of Languages 2008

For several years now the staff and students of Greendown School have joined with their counterparts all over Europe to celebrate the many different languages that are spoken everyday within the EU. That means not just the official languages of the member states but also the myriad of world languages spoken by newcomers from all the continents.
On Friday 26th September the corridors and classrooms resounded to greetings in world languages from Arabic to Zulu. We were particularly pleased to try out the Sesotho we had learnt from the teachers from our partner school Moring Wa Thoto in South Africa when they visited us last summer.

This year we took the opportunity to celebrate the diversity of languages spoken daily at home by pupils at our school. We asked some of our longstanding students and staff to become language teachers for the afternoon.
Year 8 were treated to veritable smorgasbord of linguistic experience at our first Languages Fair. As they visited the different stalls they collected useful phrases in different languages, on their passport these included, Welsh, Turkish, Farsi, Swahili, Czech. Hindi, Portuguese, Chichewa, Dutch, Suomi (Finnish) and Polish.

One of our language experts Nadia Adofo of 10 RJ said.
I really enjoyed that day teaching year 8s to speak Dutch. For some people they found it really hard. It was quite funny as well as they can’t always pronounce the words really well. It was a great experience.

Senora O’Flangan. MFL.