LEGO® LANGUAGE
English Translation: Discover or die!
One day, Curt and I were talking about language! He is homeschooled and was
bemoaning his parent's insistence to learn Greek. "I would rather learn Klingon!"
It was at this point that it occurred to me that we use LEGO® elements to teach a variety of languages...PCS has a "Truth Table" with binary numbers and logic gates made out of
Duplo pieces and parts. We also have a Duplo board depicting American Sign Language!
( We scraped off some of the numbers and letters and added our own characters ) I challenge
students to put together sentences or to spell their name in and then sign it!
So why not Klingon??? What sort of "construction brick" kits would the warrior race create?
( For those of you not in the know....Klingons are a race who inhabit a chunk of the galaxy
and are portrayed on the various Star Trek TV series and movies. They are a group of wacky
warrior types who are very concerned about honor and fighting skills. To make the characters "
realistic" a linguist, Marc Okland, was hired to create a language for these folk. Because
Klingons, albeit grumpy are generally pretty "cool," the language has attracted a mass following.
To quote the Wall Street Journal---June 13 1994:
"There are Klingon newsletters, Klingon Internet conversation groups, and audio cassettes with titles
like "Conversational Klingon" and "Power Klingon." Weddings have been performed in Klingon. An estimated quarter-million copies of the Klingon Dictionary have been sold. "Klingon is the first artificial language to be adopted by a popular culture" says Dr Schoen, a professor of psycholinguistics at Chestnut Hill College in Philidelphia and founder of the nonprofit Klingon Language Institute."
Cool.
Talk about wonderful educational stuff happening! Discussions about what sort of toys other cultures would appreciate...what Klingons would build given LEGO® elements...how would you translate various phrases into Klingon...( The WSJ article was covering a battle between scholars about translating the Bible into Klingon...literal or interpretive....is it tLrSoj meaning "grain food" or is it "blood pies?"...but I digress ).
Here is our first effort...
Click here to see the Klingon Homepage!
So Web Landers, I challenge you to teach language with construction bricks!
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Copyright© 1996 by Richard Wright for PCS Education Systems, Inc. All Rights Reserved
